awake and ready to fly, was impatiently waiting for some one to let him
out into the sunshine.

"But the March sunshine was fitful and pale, and the cold wind would
have chilled him to death before night; so we resolved to keep him
indoors. We gave him the liberty of the room, and he fluttered about the
plants in the window, now and then taking a flight to the ceiling,
where, I am sorry to say, he bruised his delicate wings; but he seemed
to learn wisdom by experience, for after a while he contented himself
with a lower flight. Every day my bed was wheeled close to the window,
and I amused myself for hours watching my pretty visitor. He would
greedily suck a drop of honey, diluted with water, from the leaf of a
plant or from the end of my finger, and by sight or smell, perhaps by
both senses, soon learned where to go for his dinner.

"And so he lived and thrived for a fortnight, and I had hopes of keeping
him till spring; but one cold night the furnace fire went out, and in
the morning my pretty swallow-tail lay dead on the window-sill. Wasn't
it a pity?

"Oh," said Florence, "I like to hear about butterflies! Will you please
tell us about some of the other kinds you have kept?"

"Tell us about that big fellow you said every body made a fuss over.
Ce-ce--I can't remember what you called him."

"Cecropia!" said Susie, promptly. "Yes, do, Auntie! if you are not
tired."

If Ruth Elliot had been ever so weary I think she would have forgotten