CHAPTER XI 



THE LIFE AND DEATH OF WORRY, THE FLY 



SHE was born in a muck-heap. The fly-mother had 

 laid her eggs on the floor of a butcher's stable ; it was a 

 tradesman's stable in a slum. The eggs had hatched 

 rapidly in the warmth of the spring-time sun, and the 

 maggots were living, eating, and crawling. Our fly- 

 heroine was born with the others, her brothers and 

 sisters, when the morning light diffused through the 

 stable, and after its equine occupant had been led out 

 with a stumble and a clatter into the yard to be 

 harnessed into his cart. The horse had gone to do his 

 day's work, but the flies remained to feed, and the 

 newly hatched maggots swarmed, burrowed, fed, and 

 thrived in their lair. 



The . early life of Worry is a story of peace and 

 plenty. She grew rapidly, undisturbed. Every evening 

 the horse returned, but the fly-maggot had found for 

 herself a nook in his bedding out of reach of his 

 stamping hoofs, for his footfall had made short work 

 of some of her fellows ; Worry was either wiser or 

 luckier, and avoided this untimely death. For six days 

 she lived and grew, shedding her skin in transparent 

 moults as her development reached its various stages. 

 Her larval life would have been quite uneventful but 

 for the hen of the stable-yard who was teaching her 

 chicks to feed, and for a mother sparrow who dropped 



