64 COUSIN CATHERINE’S SERVANTS.

the stack, and rolled the others up them with their tusks ; they
could push them up quite easily that way. The wood was
ebony—what the sharps and flats are made of ina piano. The
white notes are made of slices from the tusks of elephants; so
you see we could not have such nice smooth keys without these
big, patient servants. The strings of a violin are made from
the bodies of silkworms killed before they begin to spin; this
silver one is made of silken threads twisted round with fine
wire. As for the horse, he spares the long hairs from his tail
to make that part of the bow, which draws the music out. But
I think that Mrs Jones wants to lay the
cloth for our dinner—we must hurry over
the last two pictures.”

‘“There is not much in this one; only a
goose, and some little round marbles growing
on astem with a fly crawling on one of them,”
said Edith.

“The servants which bring me my pen and
ink when I want to write a letter,” said Cousin Catherine. ‘The
goose gives me the quill feathers from her wing—she is very kind
too in letting me have the down from her breast for my pillow,
besides which her body can be eaten, and her fat is a cure for
the pains which poor old souls like me get in their joints, and
which go away sometimes when rubbed with ‘goose-grease, as
the country folk call it. Thank you, good goose, for many a
comfortable night’s rest, many an ache driven away, and many a
pleasant hour spent in writing. But I must have ink as well as
a pen, and that little fly in the picture lays her eggs in a sort of
oak-tree. The sap from the bough runs out as the fly pricks a
hole to put her eggs into, and covers it all round, hardening
into a ball like an English oak gall, only this sort does not
grow here. The egg turns into a grub and lives inside the ball