The Apple-Seed Elf hopped down behind the caterpillar and pushed it with his foot.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed. “No more dishes to dry for you! Ha, ha!”
At that moment a blackbird swooped down over the caterpillar and made a dart at it with his beak and nearly got it. But he missed it, just, and if he hadn’t missed it that would surely have been the end of Merrimeg forever.
She wasn’t out of danger, however. The blackbird meant to have that caterpillar, and he came back directly, and this time he swooped down straight over it and opened his beak and---- But at that instant he was knocked sideways by something which shot out at him from among the branches.
It was a tiny lady with gauzy wings, a sparkling little lady, not quite so big as the blackbird, and she darted at the bird with a flash like the flash of diamonds, and knocked him sideways just as he was about to snap up the caterpillar.
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the Apple-Seed Elf, still standing on the branch behind the caterpillar. He seemed to be having a thoroughly good time.
The blackbird wasn’t going to give up so soon. He dashed at the caterpillar again, and the sparkling little lady dashed at the blackbird; and she knocked him sideways, and he flew off and turned round and came back again. He was the stubbornest blackbird in the world. He came back a dozen times. And each time the sparkling lady, with her wings buzzing like a bumblebee’s, knocked him sideways and sent him off. But the thirteenth time she missed him. Just as he was pouncing on the caterpillar she flashed by him, too late. She wheeled around and cried out, “Go away, caterpillar! Come up, butterfly!” And the caterpillar turned instantly into a beautiful butterfly, and the butterfly floated away off the branch just in time.
The blackbird snatched up the Apple-Seed Elf in its beak by the back of his coat, and dashed off with him. The elf screamed and kicked, but it wasn’t any use; the blackbird flew off with him out of sight among the trees, and did not come back any more.
Merrimeg was a butterfly, a beautiful butterfly, with pointed wings all white and blue and brown. It fluttered here and there in the sunshine for a moment, then it sailed out from the orchard as if it knew where it was going, and floated off across the cabbage garden to the kitchen window, and in through the kitchen window straight into the kitchen, where Merrimeg’s mother was washing the dishes.