“No,” answered the butterfly with a suspicion of panic in her eyes.
“Then?” I queried.
“He’s so—so awfully go-aheadish,” she complained.
“I’ll drop him a hint,” I offered kindly.
“It might do some good. I’m afraid of him,” she confessed.
“And a little bit of yourself?” I suggested.
The look of scorn which she bent upon me would have withered incontinently anything less hardy than a butterfly-devouring orchid. It passed and thoughtfulness supplanted it. “If you really think that he could be influenced to be more—well, more conventional—”
“I guarantee nothing; but I’m a pedagogue by profession and have taught some hard subjects in my time.”
“Then do you think you could give him a little message, word for word as I give it to you?”
“Senile decay,” I admitted, “may have paralyzed most of my faculties, but as a repeater of messages verbatim, I am faithful as a phonograph.”