1. "could you not tell me now?" said rose, for she wanted to hear about the little flies. and i too felt very glad to hear more about my childhood. so i sat still to listen.[pg 88]
2. "perhaps you think that the child of a fly looks just like itself; only smaller," said mrs. sutton. "but the house-fly lays a great many little eggs.
3. "she finds some old dirty rubbish, like rotten cabbage or stuff that is left by careless cooks lying about. in this she puts her eggs, and then she dies. little grubs are born from them.
4. "they begin to eat as soon as they are born, and very soon they turn into flies, after going to sleep for a while first in a kind of little hard skin or shell. they change into flies while they are inside this shell."
5. "what do the flies do when they cannot find any dirty rubbish?" said rose.
"then they go to look for it in other places," said her granny. "so you see, if we do not wish to have flies in our houses we must have no rubbish."
6. "then the flies are little servants to us, granny?"
"yes, to be sure."
"i wish i could see a baby-fly," said rose.
7. "you would not think it at all pretty,"[pg 89] said mrs. sutton. "it is a whitish maggot. but some ugly looking things are very useful to us."
"i like pretty things best," said rose.
8. "well, the fly is pretty enough when he is grown up. he has to wait, you see." i was pleased to hear the kind old lady say this, and i nodded my head and washed my face with my feet.
9. "and so it is your birthday on monday, rose," went on her granny. "and i suppose it is time to be thinking about the party and the fun we are to have?"
10. rose looked up, beaming with delight at these words. though she had not been born as a grub in a sink, i thought that she looked pretty too.
11. "we must get miss bush to write the letters for us, rose, and ask the little girls, and boys to come and spend the day with you. run now and see if she will be so good as to do it now."
"oh, very well," said rose. and she went out with a skip.
write: a house-fly is born in the sink.[pg 90] the egg from which it comes is laid in dirt and rubbish. the grub which creeps out eats up the dirty stuff.
questions: 1. where does the house-fly lay its eggs? 2. what are the young flies like at first? 3. what do they do as soon as they are born? 4. what do they eat? 6. if we do not wish to have many flies, what must we do? 6. what treat was rose going to have?
