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 rotten¹ cabbage or stuff² 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 shell³. 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.
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