“Aha!” said the Painter. “Let me look at that butterfly! Something queer about that butterfly! Wait a minute!”
He put on a pair of thick shiny spectacles and bent down over the butterfly.
“Aha!” he said. “I thought so! This isn’t a butterfly. I ought to know a butterfly when I see one. This is something else entirely. Did you ever see a butterfly with a pink sash?”
He took off his spectacles and gave them to the gnomes, and they looked at the butterfly through the spectacles, one after the other. There, around the butterfly’s body, was a thread of pink ribbon, tied with a bow. When they took the spectacles off they couldn’t see it any longer.
“Bless my soul, brother Nibby,” said Malkin, “I believe it’s——”
“I believe it is, brother, I believe it is,” said Nibby. “I’ve seen her wear a pink sash. However did she get changed into a butterfly?”
The little old Painter picked up the acorn cup which Nibby had brought, and looked into it.
“Aha!” he said. “White and blue and brown. She must have had a white skin and blue eyes and brown hair. Wait a minute.”
He poured the powder from the cup onto the table, and held his brush over it.
“White, white, come up!” he said; and all the white powder flew up onto the brush. He painted the butterfly’s wings with this, so that they became white all over.