“What’s that? What flower’s this? Oh, look at that butterfly! Here, Miss Grayson, see here—a long thin fly with his body all blue; and such lovely wings. There’s another with purple edges to it. Oh, how lovely!”
Helen’s eyes brightened, and she began to enjoy her walk, and forget the stone-throwing, when Dexter damped her enjoyment.
“Oh, here’s a lark!” he cried, plunging down into a ditch, and reappearing after a hunt in the long wet grass with a large greenish frog.
“What have you found, Dexter!”
“A jolly old frog. Look here; I’ll show you how the boys do up there at the House.”
“I think you had better not,” said Helen, wincing.
“But it’s such a game. You get a flat piece of wood, about so long, and you lay it across a stone. Then you set the frog on one end, and perhaps he hops off. If he does, you catch him again, and put him on the end of the wood over and over again till he sits still, and he does when he is tired. Then you have a stick ready, as if you were going to play at cat, and you hit the end of the stick—”
“Oh!” ejaculated Helen.
“I don’t mean the end where the frog is,” cried Dexter quickly, as he saw Helen’s look of disgust; “I mean the other end; and then the frog flies up in the air ever so high, and kicks out his legs as if he was swimming, and—”
Dexter began his description in a bright, animated way, full of gesticulation; but as he went on the expression in his companion’s face seemed to chill him. He did not understand what it meant, only he felt that he was doing or saying something which was distasteful; and he gradually trailed off, and stood staring with his narrative unfinished, and the frog in his hand.