"You all jest a gwine to kill yerse'f," she said reprovingly. "'Tain't no mannah ob use to scrub an' scour twel a fly can't stan' up nowhar. Take hit easy, Miss Bee."
"It's all that I can do for father," responded Bee, and the old woman was silenced.
So the days went by. Every morning she saw her father at breakfast, and received his formal greeting as gracefully as she could. The meal over, Doctor Raymond disappeared in his study to be seen no more until evening. He was never a demonstrative man, and his reserve seemed like indifference to his daughter. Beatrice pondered upon his unconcern until she became possessed with the one idea that somehow, some way, she must do something to attract his attention.
"It's all because I'm not pretty," thought the unhappy child one morning when this state of things had gone on for a week. "I must do something to make him like me; but what?"
Listlessly she took up her butterfly book and turned the pages idly. All at once her eye was caught by these words:
"One of the most singular and interesting facts in the animal kingdom is what has been styled mimicry. Certain colors and forms are possessed by animals which adapt them to their surroundings in such wise that they are in a greater or less degree secured from observation and attack....
"A good illustration of this fact is found in the Disipsus Butterfly, which belongs to a group which is not especially protected, but is often the prey of insect-eating creatures. This butterfly has assumed almost the exact color and markings of the milkweed butterfly, which is distasteful to birds, and hence enjoys peculiar freedom from the attacks of enemies. Because this adaption of one form to another evidently serves the purpose of defense this phenomenon has been called 'protective mimicry.'"
"'Protective mimicry,'" mused the girl thoughtfully, leaning back in her chair and clasping her hands above her head. "That means if an animal wishes to defend himself from another he just puts on the form of one that his enemy doesn't like. 'Actor bugs,' Professor Lawrence calls them. If that can be done why couldn't any creature put on any form he liked? Wouldn't it be funny if a girl could change her appearance every morning just like she does her dress? I could get up then looking just like Adele. Why!—"
Bee sat up suddenly, startled by the idea which came to her.
"Beatrice Raymond," she cried, "you can do it. Why it's done every day. Didn't Emma Drew come back from St. Louis with golden hair when she had gone away with it black? Wasn't Mrs. Simpson's hair red, and then all at once wasn't it black? And the girls are always doing things to their complexions. Why, I can be just like Adele if I wish. Oh, why didn't I think of it sooner? I've lost a whole week." And with that she jumped up from the chair, went to the mirror, and surveyed herself critically: