"I know quite well," answered Molly. "You remember our visit to your old
school-friend, Mr. Dobson?"

"Of course; perfectly."

Mr. Dobson was a worthy clergyman, doing his weary best in a rural
parish.

"And you remember Mrs. Evermore?"

"Yes."

"You thought her name a funny one; but you said it ought to have been
_'Nevermore,'_ because she seemed never to get any further!"

"Come, come, Molly! that won't do! It was you, not I, that said such a
spiteful thing!" "It was true any way!" answered Molly; "and you agreed
with me; so if I said it first, you said it last! Well, I had to study
this Mrs. Evermore. From morning to night she was evermore on the hunt
after new fancies. She watched for them, stalked them, followed them
like a boy with a butterfly-net She caught them too, of the sort she
wanted, plentifully. But none ever came to anything, so far as I could
see. She never did anything with one of them. Whatever she caught had a
cage to itself, where it sat on 'the all-alone-stone.' Every other
moment, while you and Mr. Dobson were talking, she would cry 'oh! oh!
o--o--oh!' and pull out her note-book, which was the cork-box in which
she pinned her butterflies. She must have had a whole museum of ideas!
The most accidental resemblance between words would suffice to start
one: after it she would go, catch it, pin it down, and call it a
correspondence. Now and then a very pretty notion would fall to her net,