Story of a Glowworm by Caroline Stewart — Read

Did you ever see a glowworm? There are plenty of them shining on the grass during the long nights of June and July. Shall we come out on to the lawn one evening and see them? Look! there they are! shining like little fairy lamps all over the grass. If you try to disturb them they will hide their light, for they like to keep quiet. Now you cannot find them, for they are all dark again. I do not think a glowworm is a pretty insect when it has no light. Shall we catch one very quietly while it is shining and place it on a leaf? In the morning you will see it is a rather long insect, with brown scales over its back and it has some tiny legs, in front. You must give it some lettuce leaf, and a few of those little dead flies we found on the window-sill this morning. Do you want to keep it altogether? I think you had better not do so, it would soon die. It can feed itself better than you can. And now, shall I tell you the story of a glowworm while you put this one carefully on a lettuce leaf which I have placed in a pot?

Many years ago, when I was a little girl, I was very fond of pets of all sorts. I was a funny little girl, for I did not even dislike spiders! and I often wished I could catch and tame a little mouse for my very own. There were plenty of them behind the wainscot in our large London house; but the cat would eat them one by one, so that I never got a chance of keeping one to myself. Indeed I do not think old nurse would have let me do so. She hated all such horrid creepy things, she said; but I told her I was sure a mouse was anything but horrid, because I had just been watching one come out of his hole that the carpenter had forgot to stop up.