. Harrison."

"Do you think I am like a purple butterfly?" said the doctor.

"Yes, a little,"--said Faith. But it was with a face of such childlike
soberness that the doctor looked hard at her.

"What do you think you are like yourself?" said he; not lightly.

"I think I am a little like an ant," said Faith.

The doctor turned half round on his heel.

"'Angels and ministers of grace'!" was his exclamation. "Most winged,
gentle, and etherial of all the dwellers in, or on, anthills,--know
that thy similitude is nothing meaner than a flower. You must take the
name of one, Miss Faith--all the ladies do--what will you be?"

"What will you be?" Mr. Linden repeated,--"Mignonette?--that is even
below the level of some of your anthills."

"If you please,"--she said.

"Or one of your Rhododendrons?" said the doctor--"that is better; for
you have the art--or the nature, indeed,--of representing all the tints
of the family by turns--except the unlovely ones. Be a Rhodora!"

"No"--said Faith--"I am not like that--nor like the other, but I will
be the other."

"Mignonette"--said the doctor. "Well, what shall we call him? what is
_he_ like?"

"I think," said Faith, looking down very gravely, not with the flashing
eye with which she would have said it another time,--"he is most like a
midge."

The little laugh which answered her, the way in which Mr. Linden bent
down and said, "How do you know, Miss Faith?" were slightly mystifying
to Dr. Harrison.

"I don't know,"--she said smiling; and the doctor with one or two looks
of very ungratified curiosity left them and returned to his post.

"What are they going to play, Mr. Linden?" said Faith. The doctor's
explanation, given to the rest generally, she had not heard.

"Do you know what a family connexion you have given me, Miss
Faith?--The proverb declares that 'the mother of mischief is no bigger
than a midge's wing.'"

An involuntary little caught breath attested perhaps Faith's
acquiescence in the truth of the proverb; but the doctor's words
prevented the necessity of her speaking.

"Miss Essie--Ladies and gentlemen! Please answer to your names, and
thereby proclaim your characters. Mrs. Stoutenburgh, what are you?"

"A poppy, I think," said Mrs. Stoutenburgh laughing. "I like to be
beforehand with the public."

"Will you please to name your lord and master? He is incapable of
naming himself."

"I think you've named him!" said Mrs. Stoutenburgh with a gay toss