truly, when they feel the gay wings on their backs, and can fly
away out of my sight whenever they choose!"

However, there lay the eggs on the cabbage-leaf; and the green
Caterpillar had a kind heart, so she resolved to do her best. But
she got no sleep that night, she was so very anxious. She made her
back quite ache with walking all night round her young charges, for
fear any harm should happen to them; and in the morning says she to
herself--

"Two heads are better than one. I will consult some wise animal
upon the matter, and get advice. How should a poor crawling creature
like me know what to do without asking my betters?"

But still there was a difficulty--whom should the Caterpillar
consult? There was the shaggy Dog who sometimes came into the
garden. But he was so rough!--he would most likely whisk all the
eggs off the cabbage-leaf with one brush of his tail. There was the
Tom Cat, to be sure, who would sometimes sit at the foot of the
apple-tree, basking himself and warming his fur in the sunshine;
but he was so selfish and indifferent! "I wonder which is the
wisest of all the animals I know," sighed the Caterpillar, in great
distress; and then she thought, and thought, till at last she
thought of the Lark; and she fancied that because he went up so
high, and nobody knew where he went to, he must be very clever, and
know a great deal, for to go up very high (which _she_ could
never do), was the Caterpillar's idea of perfect glory.

Now in the neighbouring corn-field their lived a Lark, and the
Caterpillar sent a message to him, to beg him to come and talk to