92 LIFE AND DEATH OF WORRY, THE FLY 



to spread death, unhappiness, sickness, misery. For 

 this was she born, and this did she do, knowing 

 nothing and caring for nothing but the joy of a short- 

 lived life. 



The weather was becoming warm as a heat-wave 

 approached, and Worry had a life of delight in the 

 warmth, a buzzing of gladness for summer. She was up 

 and doing always, and the children were sick and dying ; 

 but Nemesis was on her track. Among the germs on 

 her legs were the spores of a fungus, and these were 

 growing now in the warmth and binding and hamper- 

 ing her feet. She first noticed them when she went 

 to a garbage heap to lay her eggs. She had chosen the 

 place instinctively, because she realised that her off- 

 spring would require food when born, as she had done. 

 Then she noticed how clumsy her feet had become, and 

 she flew to clean them in some cream, but it made 

 matters worse. So she settled at last on the edge of a 

 dust-bin and there slept for a night. In the morn- 

 ing she found that she could hardly move, and the 

 fungus which had begun to grow into the interstices of her 

 chitinous skin was preventing the opening of her wings, 

 and was relentlessly claiming her life as she had claimed 

 others, Her freedom was passing, and the liberty she 

 loved so well was fading from her as her foe tied her 

 down with silken thongs. Worry's imprisonment was 

 like that of Gulliver's among the Lilliputians ; she was 

 powerless, she could not move. Her legs and wings 

 were in the vice of the canker. She was dying fettered, 

 her life once so gay and free now slowly ebbing from 

 her. She struggled vainly. Her eyes could see the 

 direst enemies of her race coming cautiously towards 

 her black ants awaiting her end as vultures await the 

 death of their prey. She saw first one, then another 



