Among the Night People | Page 6

stir the branches of the trees. "It will
rain," she said, "and then the water will run off the roof into this barrel,
and if you have just moulted and cannot fly, you will be drowned."
"Pooh!" answered the Oldest Brother. "Guess we can take care of
ourselves. I'm not afraid of a little water." Then he tried to crawl out of
his old skin.
The Mosquito Mother stayed until she had laid all the eggs she wanted
to, and then flew away. Not one of the Pup¾ had been willing to listen
to her, although some of the sisters might have done so if their brothers
had not made fun of them.

At last, twenty-three soft and tired young Mosquitoes stood on their
cast-off pupa-skins, waiting for their wings to harden. It is never easy
work to crawl out of one's skin, and the last moulting is the hardest of
all. It was then, when they could do nothing but wait, that these young
Mosquitoes began to feel afraid. The night was now dark and windy,
and sometimes a sudden gust blew their floating pupa-skins toward one
side of the barrel. They had to cling tightly to them, for they suddenly
remembered that if they fell into the water they might drown. The
oldest one found himself wishing to be a Wiggler again. "Wigglers are
never drowned," thought he.
"Who are you going to bite first?" asked one of his brothers.
He answered very crossly: "I don't know and I don't care. I'm not
hungry. Can't you think of anything but eating?"
"Why, what else is there to think about?" cried all the floating
Mosquitoes.
"Well, there is flying," said he.
"Humph! I don't see what use flying would be except to carry us to our
food," said one Mosquito Sister. She afterward found out that it was
good for other reasons.
After that they didn't try to talk with their Oldest Brother. They talked
with each other and tried their legs, and wished it were light enough for
them to see their wings. Mosquitoes have such interesting wings, you
know, thin and gauzy, and with delicate fringes around the edges and
along the line of each vein. The sisters, too, were proud of the pockets
under their wings, and were in a hurry to have their wings harden, so
that they could flutter them and hear the beautiful singing sound made
by the air striking these pockets. They knew that their brothers could
never sing, and they were glad to think that they were ahead of them for
once. It was not really their fault that they felt so, for the brothers had
often put on airs and laughed at them.
Then came a wonderful flash of lightning and a long roll of thunder,

and the trees tossed their beautiful branches to and fro, while big
rain-drops pattered down on to the roof overhead and spattered and
bounded and rolled toward the edge under which the rain-barrel stood.
"Fly!" cried the Oldest Brother, raising his wings as well as he could.
"We can't. Where to?" cried the rest.
"Fly any way, anywhere!" screamed the Oldest Brother, and in some
wonderful way the whole twenty-three managed to flutter and crawl
and sprawl up the side of the building, where the rain-drops fell past
but did not touch them. There they found older Mosquitoes waiting for
the shower to stop. Even the Oldest Brother was so scared that he
shook, and when he was that same Mosquito Mother who had told him
to put off changing his skin, he got behind two other young Mosquitoes
and kept very still. Perhaps she saw him, for it was lighter then than it
had been. She did not seem to see him, but he heard her talking to her
friends. "I told him," she said, "that he might better put off moulting,
but he answered that he could take care of himself, and that he would
be out biting people before morning."
"Did he say that?" cried the other old Mosquitoes.
"He did," she replied.
Then they all laughed and laughed and laughed again, and the young
Mosquito found out why. It was because Mosquito brothers have to eat
honey, and only the sisters may bite people and suck their blood. He
had thought so often how he would sing around somebody until he
found the nicest, juiciest spot, and then settle lightly down and bite and
suck until his slender little body was fat and round and red with its
stomachful of blood. And that could never be! He could never sing, and
he would have to sit around with his stomach full of honey and see his
eleven sisters gorged with blood and hear them singing sweetly as they
flew. If Mosquito Fathers