it's that you don't know it's happening--and
there's nobody to put you wise. Why," his forehead puckered as if a
thought new to him had struck him, "why, your very looks get to be
different!"

Mary Virginia started. "Oh, looks!" said she, thoughtfully. "Now,
isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds
me that I brought something to the Padre--something that set me to
thinking about people's looks, too,--and how you never can tell. Wait
a minute, and I'll show you." She reached for the pretty crocheted bag
she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box.
None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was
upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if
Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!

"I happened to put my hand on a tree--and this little fellow moved,
and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk,
he looked so much like it," said the child, opening the little box.
Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly
gray moth, with his wings folded down.

"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 Catocalae,"
I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you--there's always a
demand for the Catocalae. 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
th