“Oh! I assure you there is a wonderful variety,” she answered, with an eager and brilliant smile.
“Clouds and sunsets?” asked Rachel, beginning to be interested.
“Yes, differing every day. Then I have the tamarisk and its inhabitants. There has been a tom-tit’s nest every year since we came, and that provides us with infinite amusement. Besides the sea-gulls are often so good as to float high enough for me to see them. There is a wonderful charm in a circumcribed view, because one is obliged to look well into it all.”
“Yes; eyes and no eyes apply there,” said Rachel.
“We found a great prize, too, the other day. Rosie!”
At the call a brown-haired, brown-eyed child of seven, looking like a little fawn, sprang to the window from the outside.
“My dear, will you show the sphynx to Miss Curtis?”
The little girl daintily brought a box covered with net, in which a huge apple-green caterpillar, with dashes of bright colour on his sides, and a horny spike on his tail, was feasting upon tamarisk leaves. Grace asked if she was going to keep it. “Yes, till it buries itself,” said the child. “Aunt Ermine thinks it is the elephant sphynx.”
“I cannot be sure,” said the aunt, “my sister tried to find a figure of it at Villars’, but he had no book that gave the caterpillars. Do you care for those creatures?”
“I like to watch them,” said Grace, “but I know nothing about them scientifically; Rachel does that.”