"One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?" said she, looking down at the creature.
"No," said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned his neck over the box. "No, miss, I shouldn't think I'd call something like that pretty,"—he looked from the moth to Mary Virginia, a bit disappointedly.
Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body, very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with black.
"I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me something about him," said the little girl. "The Padre's crazy about moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before, and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden under that gray cloak of his!"
"He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocalæ," I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you—there's always a demand for the Catocalæ. And you may call him an Underwing, if you prefer—that's his common name."
"I got to thinking," said the little girl, thoughtfully, lifting her clear and candid eyes to John Flint's. "I got to thinking, when he threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings, that he's like some people—people you'd think were very common, you know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you? So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for them—because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to touch them—why, then you find out!" Her eyes grew deeper, and brighter, as they do when she is moved; and the color came more vividly to her cheek. "Don't you reckon," said she naïvely, "that plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings, didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside—and all the while the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!"
The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.
"Could I hold it—for a minute—in my own hand?" he asked, turning brick-red.
"Of course you may," said Mary Virginia pleasantly. "I see by the Padre's face this isn't a rare moth—he's been here all along, only my eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the air—I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself."
She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool green depth of the shrubbery.