[Illustration: "You must steal in and not wake anybody"]


The Butterfly House

By

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Author of
"A Humble Romance," "A New England Nun,"
"The Winning Lady," etc.

With illustrations by
Paul Julien Meylan

New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1912





Chapter I


Fairbridge, the little New Jersey village, or rather city (for it had
won municipal government some years before, in spite of the protest
of far-seeing citizens who descried in the distance bonded debts out