that, so I ran to the end of the street, to save him from the other
kids, and then I turned him loose and watched him beat it for the sky.
They're pretty things, butterflies. Somehow I always liked them better
than any other living creatures." He was staring after the moth, his
forehead wrinkled. He spoke almost unconsciously, and he certainly had
no idea that he had given us cause for a hopeful astonishment.

Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint's
hands lying loosely upon his knees. Her face brightened.

"Padre," she suggested suddenly, "why don't you let him help you with
your butterflies? Look at his hands! Why, they're just exactly the
right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to
stretch wings without loosening a scale. He could be taught in a few
lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be! And you do
so need help with those insects of yours, Padre--I've heard you say
so, over and over."

The child was right--John Flint did have good hands--large enough,
well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned,
sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a
prize-fighter.

"If you think there's any way I could help the parson for awhile, I'd
be proud to try, miss. It's true," he added casually, with a
sphinx-like immobility of countenance, "that I'm what might be called
handy with my fingers."

"We'll call it settled, then," said Mary Virginia happily.

Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to
look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little
sister. When they were younger the boy had often complained that she
might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the
little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he'd been a
brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious
impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from
the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.

My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant
twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.

"Parson," said he, abruptly, "Parson, you folks are swells, ain't you?
The real thing, I mean, you and Madame? Even the yellow nigger's a
lady nigger, ain't she?"

"I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is--Madame. And
Clelie is a good servant."

"But you were born a swell, weren't you?" he persisted. "Old family,