ouse. Of course, this susceptibility comprehended Bertha, too, else
she never could have been made the medium of such administration. While
engaged in discharging her floral office, she appeared as one in happy
trance, never speaking and apparently as oblivious of what was passing
around her as Sprigg himself. Always, when she had finished strewing the
flowers, she would take her station at the foot of the bed, where, with
pretty little arms folded together and resting on the footboard, she
would stand gazing fixedly into the unconscious, spirit-like face before
her, with a look of dreamy, tender, solemn wonder in her innocent blue
eyes, beautiful to behold.

How could poor Sprigg have ever imagined that he had but to put on a
pair of red moccasins to captivate the fancy and win the love of such a
little angel as Bertha Bryant? Had she seen him so
bedizened--"Fop-Indian!" "Jack-Monkey!" would have been the first
thoughts to pop into her judicious little head, and Sprigg might have
chased her till he had worn his red moccasins slip-shod, and no more
have caught her had he, indeed, been a monkey, chasing a dove or a bird
of paradise. That he was spared such a humiliation was because he had
become by strange chance an object of Manitou interest, and was not
allowed to carry out the ridiculous programme he had proposed to
himself. What a pity it is that many of us grown-up Spriggs can not
become objects of similar interest, to be dealt with in the like
manner, even to the bleeding-heart degree, and made to abandon,
perforce, many a purpose in life, which, when it is too late to escape
the humiliation of its failure, or, worse, still, of its success, proves
to be not a whit less paltry or preposterous than the programme our
little hero had in view when he donned his red moccasins.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Manitou Butterfly.

On the evening of the seventh day, hardly had Bertha deflowered the
bush, when suddenly it burst again into bloom more glorious than ever
before. Hardly had the flowers unfolded, when they resolved themselves
into a blood-red mist, which quickly enveloped the whole bush, and when
it had cleared away the Manitou arbor vitae had vanished--a thing too
beautiful to be seen again in a lifetime.

But now, when the last culling of that mysterious life-giving flower was
strewn upon him, Sprigg not only smiled with brighter, more present
intelligence than at any previous time, but opened his long-closed ey