“Yes!” answered Laleham smiling, “they are like the butterflies of the imagination—frail but indestructible.”
Sir Gilbert laughed at this reminder that there were other hobbies than his own.
“Forgive me,” he said, “I am afraid I am selfishly riding my own hobby; and in my Psyche, forgetting yours. Tell me about your Psyche.”
Laleham shook his head, and proceeded to tell of his varying fortune in foreign lands, and how he had come back with all the butterflies of the world, except the one butterfly. Sir Gilbert gave him the sympathy of a fellow collector.
“But surely,” he said, “you haven’t given up the chase—at your age.”
“Almost,” answered Laleham, “I am too old. The wildest enthusiasm—for butterflies—can hardly outlive thirty. I think I shall take up some serious study—like yours.”
Both the friends laughed, and Sir Gilbert said:
“But, seriously, I have heard of your butterfly having been seen within a mile or two from here no longer than a week ago. There were two fellows staying at the inn last month who called to see me, enthusiasts like yourself, and they were positive that they had seen it over by the Black Ditches—of course, you know the place. But they missed it, all the same.”
“The worst of the beast is,” said Laleham, “that you cannot be sure, so to say, that it is itself till you have it in your hand. The other brute is so like it.”
“Yet you were once sure enough, dear friend,” answered Sir Gilbert.