by Anne Digby
‘I am afraid you must have thrown them away when you cleaned out the box,’ said Miss Brown.
‘I shall write down the number I have and always count them in future,’ said Susan. The others did this too, for they were afraid of losing theirs like Susan.
Another really dreadful thing happened the week after. Somebody opened the window and forgot to shut it – and there, on the window-sill were the fat silkworms, eating away at the mulberry leaves.
When the children came back from their play in the garden, they heard a scurry of wings in the schoolroom – and what do you think had happened? Some sparrows had peeped in at the open window and had seen the silkworms. And they had taken at least thirty or forty!
The children were so upset. Miss Brown was sorry too.
‘Well, I did warn you not to leave this window open,’ she said.
‘It was my fault,’ said John, very red. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’
‘Being sorry won’t bring back our poor silkworms,’ said Mary sadly.
‘Well, it’s a thing that any of us might have done,’ said kind-hearted Peter, sorry for John. ‘It’s a good thing we came in when we did – we’ve still got plenty. And my word, aren’t the silkworms enormous now!’
They certainly were – and they kept doing a most surprising thing. They split their skins, and worked their way out of them! The first time Peter saw one doing this he was quite alarmed and tought that his silkworm was ill!
‘Oh no,’ said Miss Brown, laughing. ‘They grow so fast that their skins become too tight, so they have to split them. But it doesn’t matter because they have a fine new skin underneath!’
Four times the silkworms changed their skins, and they grew so enormously that, as Miss Brown had said, they were longer and fatter than Susan’s fingers.
‘The silkworms always seem to feel a bit upset before they change their skins,’ said John. ‘But goodness, don’t they eat afterwards! Miss Brown, I watched this one through the magnifying-glass when it changed its skin. It was marvellous!’
After about six weeks had gone by the silkworms began to look a little different. The children all noticed the change.
‘They seem to have gone a bit smaller,’ said Mary, ‘and they look rather transparent. Mine won’t eat at all, Miss Brown, and look at that one shaking its head about as if it’s giddy.’
‘The time has come for them to change into chrysalids. We must help them,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Look, here is some new blotting-paper. I want you to make some cone-shaped bags like those the grocer makes for currants. Make one for each silkworm. The silkworms are about to do their most marvellous work now – they are going to spin their silk!’
Miss Brown put a few twigs into each box. She told the children to watch which silkworms climbed up them. Any that did this were to be taken up gently and popped into a cone-shaped bag.
John had three silkworms to put into the blotting-paper bags.
‘Write the date on the bags,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Now pin the bags up on the wall in a row, John. Pin under each one a piece of paper in case the silkworm sends out a flow of water and stains the wall. There – that’s right!’
Soon more and more bags were pinned up on the wall as the silkworms came to the time when they must spin. How the children loved to peep into each bag and see the silkworms spinning, spinning, spinning! To and fro they moved their heads, and the children, looking through the magnifying-glass, saw a thin thread of silk coming from their lower lips. Each silkworm had fastened itself to the bag, and was now winding the golden silk around itself.
At first the children could see each silkworm through the mist of thread – but after a while the silk was so thick that the silkworm had quite disappeared behind it. In a few days the cocoon was finished, a lovely golden case.
‘Is the silkworm inside?’ asked John.
‘Yes – and there it changes its skin for the last time!’ said Miss Brown. ‘And if you could see the silkworm now it would no longer look like a caterpillar – but a chrysalis. Its skin becomes hard, like a shell, and is red-brown. It lies quite still – and a miracle happens!’
‘Yes, I know what it is,’ said Mary. ‘The caterpillar changes to a silk-moth, with wings. I do wish I knew how it did that, Miss Brown. It’s like magic.’
‘Miss Brown, the silkworm I put into this bag yesterday is trying to get out,’ called Susan. ‘It won’t spin.’
‘Well, it isn’t quite ready then,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Put it back into the box to eat a little longer. Now, John, when a week has gone by we will unwind the silk from this cocoon and you will see how strong and fine the thread is – perfect for weaving into clothes.’
The silkworms all made their golden cocoons one by one – and then, when a week or so had gone by, Miss Brown took a cocoon gently from a bag. She pulled off the loose outer silk, and found the end of the long thread that the silkworm used to spin its cocoon. Then she took a doubled-over piece of stiff paper and began to wind the silk round and round it.
The golden cocoon rolled about on the table with the pull of the silk. Miss Brown told John to go on winding off the silk till it was finished. It took him a long time! The cocoon became smaller and smaller as he wound the silk, which lay golden and fine round his paper. At last the last piece was wound – and there, on the table, was nothing but a little hard-shelled chrysalis, and the last cast-off skin of the silkworm!
The children loved winding off their silk. They had such a lot. Mary said she was going to use it for sewing!
All the silkworm chrysalids were put into a box – and then one day a surprising thing happened – from each chrysalis a cream-coloured moth came out. They had stout furry-looking bodies, and they stood about, drying their wings.
‘The big ones are the mother-moths,’ said Miss Brown, ‘Now who would think that these pretty winged creatures could possibly grow from the tiny eggs we had at the beginning of June!’
The children took a big box and put the silk-moths into it. First they lined the box with paper, as Miss Brown told them to. They did not put on the lid as the moths could not fly. They did not even give them anything to eat, for the moths had no mouths!
‘We’ll leave them alone in peace in this shady corner of the classroom,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Then maybe they will lay their eggs for us, and next year we shall not need to buy any!’
The moths did lay their eggs – hundreds of them in neat batches on the lining-paper. Miss Brown took out the paper, cut out the batches of eggs, left them exposed to the air for about four days, and then put them away in a cool cupboard till the next year.
‘And next spring we’ll hatch out our own eggs and keep silkworms all over again!’ said Susan, pleased. ‘Well, that was interesting, Miss Brown!’
Have you read them all?
1. The Naughtiest Girl In the School
2. The Naughtiest Girl Again
3. The Naughtiest Girl Is a Monitor
4. Here’s the Naughtiest Girl
5. The Naughtiest Girl Keeps a Secret
6. The Naughtiest Girl Helps a Friend
7. The Naughtiest Girl Saves the Day
8. Well Done, the Naughtiest Girl!
9. The Naughtiest Girl Wants to Win
10. The Naughtiest Girl Marches On
Text copyright © Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1999
Illustrations copyright © Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2014
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Hodder Children’s Books
This ebook edition published in 2014
The right of Enid Blyton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitt
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All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 978 1 844 56953 3
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