"Jimmy Rabbit has made a terrible mistake!" he groaned, as he started for the duck pond.
Back at the meeting place once more, Freddie Firefly rushed up to Jimmy Rabbit in great excitement.
"Do you know what you did?" he cried. "You brought me the wrong picture. And Dusty Moth has gone shrieking off into the darkness, he was so disappointed. This is not Betsy Butterfly's picture! It's some dreadful-looking caterpillar. And when[p. 108] I glanced at it just now, over in the orchard, it sent a chill all through me."
For the time being Jimmy Rabbit said nothing. At first he had seemed quite upset. But before Freddie had finished speaking he had begun to smile. And then he unwrapped the picture once more and leaned it against a stone, where the moon's rays fell squarely upon it.
"You're mistaken," he informed Freddie then. "This is a picture of Betsy Butterfly. I painted it myself; and I ought to know. As I explained last night, I made it earlier in the summer; and as I said, she has changed somewhat in the meantime. But it's a very good likeness of her as she was once."
"You mean—" gasped Freddie Firefly—"you mean that Betsy Butterfly was once an ugly caterpillar?"
"Why, certainly!" said Jimmy Rabbit.[p. 109] "And so was Dusty Moth, for that matter. Yes! he was a caterpillar himself, once—and a much uglier one than Betsy, if only he knew it.
"In fact," said Jimmy, looking at the picture with his head on one side, "as caterpillars go, Betsy Butterfly was a great beauty, even at so early an age."