Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man. Marie Conway Oemler
Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and somber eyes, hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training himself to use the crutches Westmoreland had lately brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging himself along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch struck a discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the spring evening; nor could we say anything to comfort him, we who were not maimed.
Came a high, sweet, shrill call at the gate; a high yelp of delight from Pitache, hurtling himself forward like a woolly white cannonball; a sound of light and flying feet; and Mary Virginia ran into the garden, the little overjoyed dog leaping frantically about her. She wore a white frock, and over it a light scarlet jacket. Her blue eyes were dancing, lighting her sweet and fresh face, colored like a rose. The gay little breeze that came along with her stirred her skirts, and fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal shape, at once delicate and vital.
Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left, dashed to the fence to call greetings. My mother, seizing the child by the arms, held her off a moment, to look her over fondly; then, drawing her closer, kissed her as a daughter is kissed.
I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that painful happiness her presence always occasioned me, when she came back after an absence—as if the Other Girl flashed into view for a quick moment, and then was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking down at her with boyish condescension.
"Huh! I can eat hominy off her head!" said he, aggravatingly.
"Old Mister Biggity!" flashed Mary Virginia. And then she turned and met, face to face, the fixed stare of John Flint, hanging upon his crutches as one might upon a cross—a stare long, still, intent, curious, speculative, almost incredulous.
"You are the Padre's last guest, aren't you?" her eyes were full of gravest sympathy. "I'm so sorry you met with such a misfortune—but I'm gladder you're alive. It's so good just to be alive in the spring, isn't it?" She smiled at him directly, taking him, as it were, into a pleasant confidence. She seemed perfectly unconscious of the evil unloveliness of him; Mary Virginia always seemed to miss the evil, passing it over as if it didn't exist. Instead, diving into the depths of other personalities, always she brought to the surface whatever pearl of good might lie concealed at the bottom. To her this sinister cripple was simply another human being, with whose misfortune one must sympathize humanly.
Clélie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new red-and-white bandanna to do greater honor to the little girl whom she adored, set a table under the trees and spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches, the delectable little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother had made to celebrate the child's return. And we had tea, making very merry, for she had a thousand amusing things to tell us, every airy trifle informed with something of her own brave bright mirthful spirit. John Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and drank his tea stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for him to break bread in such company.
"Padre," said Mary Virginia with deep gravity. "My aunt Jenny says I'm growing up. She says I'll have to put up my hair and let down my frocks pretty soon, and that I'll probably be thinking of beaux in another year, though she hopes to goodness I won't, until I've got through with school at least."
The almost unconscious imitation of Miss Jenny's pecking, birdlike voice made me smile.
"Beaux! Long skirts! Put up hair! Great Scott, will you listen to the kid!" scoffed Laurence. "You everlasting little silly, you! P'tite Madame, these cakes are certainly all to the good. May I have another two or three, please!"
"I'm 'most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne," said Mary Virginia, with dignity. "You're only seventeen, so you don't need to give yourself such hateful airs. You're not too old to be greedy, anyhow. Padre, am I growing up?"
"I fear so, my child," said I, gloomily.
"You're not glad, either, are you, Padre?"
"But you were such a delightful child," I temporized.
"Oh, lovely!" said Laurence, eying her with unflattering brotherliness. "And she had so much feeling, too, Mary Virginia! Why, when I was sick once, she wanted me to die, so she could ride to my funeral in the front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little ghoul! She was horribly disappointed when I got better—she thought it disobliging of me, and that I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when I tried to reason with her—and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a kid did—she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your delightful Mary Virginia for you!"
"Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel—you stayed disagreeably alive and you're going to become a lawyer," said Mary Virginia, too gently. "And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne! Won't it be funny, though?"
"I don't see anything funny in calling you Miss Eustis," said Laurence, with boyish impatience. "And I'm certainly not going to notice you if you're silly enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you won't be a fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools." He ate another cake.
"Not half as big fools as boys are, though," said she, dispassionately. "My father says the man is always the bigger fool of the two."
Laurence snorted. "I wonder what we'll be like, though—both of us?" he mused.
"You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly despise people like Madame and the Padre and me!"
"You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all over you. Allow me to inform you I'm not biggity, miss! I'm logical—something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what you think you're going to grow up to be?"
"Oh, let's quit talking about it," she said petulantly. "I hate to think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy—and I want to be happy!" She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.
"Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow up?" she asked him, wistfully.
"Me?" he laughed harshly. "I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born grown up." His face darkened.
"That wasn't a bit fair," said she, with instant sympathy.
"There's a lot not fair," he told her, "when you're born and brought up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though that's pretty bad; it's that you don't know it's happening—and there's nobody to put you wise. Why," his forehead puckered as if a thought new to him had struck him, "why, your very looks get to be different!"
Mary Virginia started. "Oh, looks!" said she, thoughtfully. "Now, isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds me that I brought something to the Padre—something that set me to thinking about people's looks, too—and how you never can tell. Wait a minute, and I'll show you." She reached for the pretty crocheted bag she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box. None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!
"I happened to put my hand on a tree—and this little fellow moved, and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk, he looked so much like it," said the child, opening the little box. Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly gray moth, with his wings folded down.
"One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?" said she, looking down at the creature.
"No," said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned his neck over the box. "No, miss, I shouldn't