"'Breaking a Butterfly,' Lissy, please! Now don't tell me you never heard of it, because I am perfectly sure Bobby never did, and that makes three of us."
"I never did, Kitty, honestly I didn't. I don't believe it's in the library, unless it is one of those old, old ones that haven't been catalogued yet. Old Mrs. Spooner left them to us, you know. They are in the inner room, waiting to be catalogued. I can't seem to get time——"
"I'll go look; may I? And, oh, Bobby, do you want to be a perfect angel and look up Orchis Spectabilis in Gray? We had such a dispute last night, Aunt Johanna and I! She says its habitat is—well, find out for me, there's a dear!"
Kitty vanished into the inner room, leaving the other two staring blankly at each other.
"Spec—what did she say, Bobby?"
"Spectabilis!" Bobby spoke hardily, as became a Corona senior, though he had not "taken" Latin since his first year in High School. "Respectable, I think it means; something bound in gray, she said. Let's see what there is in gray, Lissy! Here's the Life of Hannah More; that would be respectable, what?"
"I don't believe she means that!"
Melissa was fluttering very prettily. It was a most wonderful thing to be alone with Bobby in the Library, where she so often dreamed of him, little wistful gray dreams with only here and there a gleam of rose-color! How tall he was, how handsome, how strong! how like that beautiful bust! and Melissa glanced at the Olympian Hermes. Well, Bobby's hair did curl, but otherwise——
"I don't believe she means that," Melissa repeated. "Nobody has ever taken that out since I've been here. I looked into it once, dusting, you know; it looked awfully poky. Perhaps——" Melissa put forth the suggestion timidly, "she meant Gray was the person who wrote it. There's the Elegy, you know!"
"Of course!" Bobby responded heartily. "Sure thing! 'Curfew shall not ring to-night!' We learned that at High School, didn't we, Lissy?" He smiled kindly on the girl. "Gray's the chap; trot him out!"