188 LITTLE FOLKS 
YOUR LITTLE SERVANTS. 
I don t suppose you know much about your little Servants, who 
work for you all the long Summer, and never ask a bit of pay. 
Millions and millions of them there are, and one would suppose that, 
at least, you would thank them for their work. But instead of that 
you slander them, and kill them whenever you can. 
That isn't because you are bad — it's only because you are 
ignorant, and don't know how much these little creatures do for 
you. 
You know that when water stands in little pools about houses 
it gets very bad, and smells awfully, but perhaps you don't know 
that it sends out gases which give us dreadful fevers. ( People are 
very thoughtless, and many such pools are in the back streets of 
cities. Very soon they would begin to die off with fevers, but there 
comes a squad of our little Servants, who go speedily to work to 
make the water harmless. 
They have a droll way of doing it — they just set their babies 
to eat it up. 
" Horrid ! " did you say ? Well, it does sound unpleasant, but 
you must know that the babies like it ; they would die in clear 
sweet water. In fact, they were made on purpose to like it. 
The little mothers lay the eggs close by the bad water. The 
eggs hatch, and the babies — little tiny bits of worms they are — crawl 
down to the water, and go to work. Now they want to sink deep 
into the water, while at the same time, they must have air to 
breathe. So they have a long sort of pipe which they stick up 
above the water, and the deeper they sink, the longer is the pipe. 
See them in the picture on opposite page. 
There they stay for some time, eating the unhealthy matter, 
and then they crawl up to a dry place, pull in the pipe till it is all 
coiled up like a rope. The mother of these industrious babies — I 
forgot to tell you — is a Fly. Cess-pool Fly, we call her, but the 
wise books call her Helopkilus. It's an awful name — isn't it? — 
but she don't care a snap, she's too busy. 
