"See--see they're not all red--or partly so--s-such a lovely pinky-red, especially around the fins and head--that's where they keep their pigment," said Tanpa. "Some have colored themselves like goldfish; others are greenish--or lighter yellow."
"Ha! While others, again, are gotten up as if for a minstrel show for their marriage--painted black, for the time being!" laughed her husband, the tall Scout Officer.
"Yes. That's why we like, girls and boys, to come down to our camp early in the season--if only at intervals--because we watch the summer coming and can study the wonderful lake life as at no other time," remarked the Guardian again, and then subsided into private life in the stern of the broad, red camp-skiff, scribbling something in verse form to be read at the White Birch celebration in the afternoon when land as well as lake was a-riot with young color, strewn with wild flowers for gay June to tread on.
"Oh! isn't it the most wonderful--wonderful season? In the city we go camping too late. The freshness isn't there." Pem's eyes were dim as she applied one to the lens of the microscope, to gaze once more at the painted Tritons; she was glad that in the freshness of the year it was--oh! so soon now--that the little Thunder Bird would momentarily color the skies and paint the World rose-colored in excitement over its demonstration--over the heights that could be reached--paving the way for the Triton of Tritons to come.
"Well! if we spend any more time with the minnows, we'll have to 'cut out' the 'fresh-water sheep', the little roaches, and the insects' egg-boats," said the Scoutmaster. "Speaking of the latter, I saw a curious one yesterday upon a stagnant pool over on the other side of the lake; perhaps the visitors would be interested in it."
The visitors were interested in the bare mention. Warming equally to comfort and excitement again, they clamored--Pemrose and Una--for a sight of that raft of gnats' eggs, so cunningly formed and glued together, minute egg to egg, hundreds of them, that it was a regular lifeboat--no storm could sink it, and pressure only temporarily.
Yet, after all, Pemrose only half heard the Scoutmaster's explanation of how the insect chose a floating stick or straw as a nucleus, placed her forelegs on it and laid the egg upon her hind ones, holding it there until she had brought forth another to join it, gluing the two together by their sticky coating,--and so on till the broad and buoyant boat was constructed!