First Butterfly.—"Ho! There goes up our prison wall! That's the big hand that held the bright light. How good the air feels! Now for a chance to try our wings! Away we go!"
[HOW LILY-TOES WAS CAUGHT IN A SHOWER.]
By Emily H. Leland.
Lily-toes, though quite a pet, was the fourth baby, and, consequently, was not so great a wonder in the eyes of her family as she might have been. She and her mamma were on a visit to her grandma's, in the country. As she had been there a week, the excitement attendant on her arrival had so far subsided that grandma was beginning to turn her attention to cheese-making, her two aunties to sew vigorously on their new cambric dresses, and grandpa and the big hired man to become so engaged in the "haying" that they scarcely saw Lily-toes except at supper-time.
Lily-toes, as if to make amends for being the fourth, was a lovely chubby baby of eight months, so full of sunshine and content and blessed good health, that although her two first teeth were just grumbling through, she would sit in her high chair by the window or roll and wriggle about on the floor, singing tuneless songs and telling herself wordless stories, an hour at a time, without making any demands on anybody, so that grandma and the aunties declared that half the time they would not know there was a baby in the house. Perhaps it is sometimes a fault to be too good-natured; for there came a certain afternoon when Lily-toes would have been pleased if somebody had remembered there was a baby in the house.
It happened in this way. There was company at grandma's. Not the kind of city company that comes to dine after babies are in bed for the night, but country company,—that comes early in the afternoon and stays and talks over whole life-times before tea. Grandma, mamma, and the aunties were enjoying it all very much; and Lily-toes, who was, if possible, more angelic than ever, had wakened from a blessed nap, lunched on bread and milk and strawberries, and was stationed in her high chair on the back piazza where she could admire the landscape and watch the cows and sheep feeding upon the hill-sides. A honeysuckle swung in the breeze above her head, and little chickens, not big enough to do harm to grandma's flower-beds, ran to and fro in the knot-grass, hunting for little shiny green bugs, and fluttering and peeping in a way that was very interesting to Lily-toes. No baby could be more comfortably situated on a hot summer day; at least, so her mamma thought, as she tied Lily-toes securely in her chair with a soft scarf, and went back to the sitting-room and the busy sewing and talking with her dear old girlhood friends. I presume if Lily-toes had been a first baby, her mamma would have hesitated about leaving her there. She would have feared—may be—that the chickens would eat her up or that she might swallow the paper-weight. As it was, she only kissed the little thing with a sort of mechanical smack and left her alone, as coolly as if lovely Lily-toe babies were an every-day affair.
Meanwhile, and for many days before, great distress was going on in the fields and gardens for lack of rain. The young corn was drooping, the vines fainting, the sweet red roses opening languidly, the grasses growing dry and brittle to the bite of the patient cows and nibbling sheep. Everything, except Lily-toes, was expressing a desire for rain. In fact, all through the night before this story of a wronged baby opens, the hills, woods, fields, and gardens, had been praying for rain according to their individual needs, the maples and elms desiring a "regular soaker," while the lowly pansies lifted their fevered little palms to the stars and begged but a few drops.