Ethel Turner

“ Brown that the child has an important place in the universe, after all.
In a week Frank was the proud possessor of forty-nine fine specimens, Ettie's collection numbered twenty-eight— as she pathetically added, it would have been thirty-three, only once she left the gate open for an hour, and five escaped. Strangely enough, too, Frank added precisely five to his collection the following day, and Ettie always maintained that they were hers that had been lost and were now found. She declared that she knew them by their eyes and the way they moved their horns. ”

“ A red surge of anger swept up in the boy's face.
"I'll put my l-locust down your b-b-back in a m-minute!" he stuttered.
"My locust," put in Frank. "Here, hand it back this minute. If I'm not to start snails, you shan't have my locust."
"B-but I gave you my wh-white alley for it!" spluttered Stan indignantly. Frank had forgotten this little fact for the moment.
"A locust like that's worth more than a white alley," he said—"tell you, I'll fight you for it." They had all forgotten parental presence on the verandah. ”

“ Ettie pointed a timid finger at her particular cage. "If—if you do look, those are mine," she said. "A hundred and twenty-two, only five of them have acc'dent'ly got into Frank's cage."
The Vision's eyes, having had all they wanted of the apple tree, fell to the cages with their slowly, slowly moving masses of shells.
"What on earth are they?" she said. "They can't be snails."
Frank made a desperate fight for the establishment of his endangered repute with the Vision. ”

“ Ettie could not even find a scratch upon her.
And under the bush were snails, precisely three of them. Two were fine in size, but one was small and in some way appealed to Stan's locust-bereaved heart. He picked it up, and it nestled confidingly in his palm—or he considered that it did, which amounts to precisely the same thing.
"Tell you," he said, and flung back his head with reckless nobility, "we'll all c'llect. You and Et can have those"—he touched the striped ones with his boot-toe; "I only want poor little lonely sad ones in my c'llection." ”

“ She was far too lovely and far off a vision to invite to the neighbourhood of the fowl-houses and for the purpose of seeing snails, so even Frank made no mention of the things, but allowed Ettie to produce her postcard album unchallenged. ”

“ You would leave the house actually promising yourself to drop a line to a friend who had a friend who knew somebody in Tokio or Kobe, requesting as a favour that a card be at once posted to the address of Miss Ettie Brown, who yearned inexpressibly for a postcard smelling of gunpowder.
Frank collected cigarette pictures. It was in vain that his parents tried to wean him from a hobby that might awaken a desire in him some day to go deeper into the packet than the picture. Indeed, Mrs. ”

“ He told them other interesting things about their pets, drew attention to the foot or sole on which each progressed, and which was flattened beneath and fringed at the edge. One foot and fourteen thousand teeth—more room in Snail-land for dentists than bootmakers, he said. ”