grew the worm-fence with the blackberry bramble climbing along its
corners, and the fennel, and the elder bushes near by; and in the
foreground the tall thistle, with the butterfly upon it. The Red
Admiral is a gourmet; he lingers daintily over his meals; so Peter
had time to make a careful sketch of him. This done, he sketched in
the field beyond, and the buzzard hanging motionless in the sky.

It was crude and defective, of course, and a casual eye wouldn't
have glanced twice at it, but a true teacher would instantly have
recognized the value, not of what it performed, but of what it
presaged. For all its faults it was bold and rapid, like the
Admiral's flight, and it had the Admiral's airy grace and freedom.
It seized the outlines of things with unerring precision.

The child kneeling in the dust of the Riverton Road, with an old
geography open on his knee, felt in his thin breast a faint flutter,
as of wings. He looked at the sketch; he watched the Red Admiral
finish his meal and go scudding down the wind. And he knew he had
found the one thing he could do, the one thing he wanted to do, that
he must and would do. It was as if the butterfly had been a fairy,
to open for Peter a tiny door of hope. He wrote under the sketch:

Jun. 2, 189- This day I notissed the red and blak buterfly on
the thissel.

He stared at this for a while, and added:

P.S. In futcher watch for this buterfly witch mite be a fary.

Then he went trudging homeward. He was smiling, his own shy, secret