moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the
lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before,
and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden
under that gray cloak of his!"

"He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocalæ,"
I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you--there's always a
demand for the Catocalæ. And you may call him an Underwing, if you
prefer--that's his common name."

"I got to thinking," said the little girl, thoughtfully, lifting her
clear and candid eyes to John Flint's. "I got to thinking, when he
threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings,
that he's like some people--people you'd think were very common, you
know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and
uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for
them--because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to
touch them--why, then you find out!" Her eyes grew deeper, and
brighter, as they do when she is moved; and the color came more
vividly to her cheek. "Don't you reckon," said she naïvely, "that
plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the
street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings,
didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre
says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside--and all the while
the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it
wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!"

The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in
his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light