"How _very_ singular," she thought--and clapped her hand to her
nose and held it tight shut. The veriest stench came from the
little brown drop. Maya almost fainted. She flew away as fast as
she could and seated herself on a raspberry, where she held on
to her nose and shivered with disgust and excitement.

"Serves you right," someone above her called, and laughed. "Why
take up with a stink-bug?"

"Don't laugh!" cried Maya.

She looked up. A white butterfly had alighted overhead on a
slender, swaying branch of the raspberry bush, and was slowly
opening and closing its broad wings--slowly, softly, silently,
happy in the sunshine--black corners to its wings, round black
marks in the centre of each wing, four round black marks in all.
Ah, how beautiful, how beautiful! Maya forgot her vexation. And
she was glad, too, to talk to the butterfly. She had never made
the acquaintance of one before even though she had met a great
many.

"Oh," she said, "you probably are right to laugh. Was that a
stink-bug?"

"It was," he replied, still smiling. "The sort of person to keep
away from. You're probably very young still?"

"Well," observed Maya, "I shouldn't say I was--exactly. I've
been through a great deal. But that was the first specimen of
the kind I had ever come across. Can you imagine doing such a
thing?"

The butterfly had to laugh again.

"You see," he explained, "stink-bugs like to keep to themselves.
They are not very popular, so they use the odoriferous drop to
make people take notice of them. We'd probably soon forget the
fact of their existence if it were not for the drop: it serves
as a reminder. And they want to be remembered, no matter how."

"How lovely, how exquisitely lovely your wings are," said Maya.
"So delicate and white. May I introduce myself? Maya, of the
nation of bees."

The butterfly laid his wings together to look like only one wing
standing straight up in the air. He gave a slight bow.

"Fred," he said laconically.

Maya couldn't gaze her fill.

"Fly a little," she asked.

"Shall I fly away?"

"Oh no. I just want to see your great white wings move in the
blue air. But never mind. I can wait till later. Where do you
live?"

"Nowhere specially. A settled home is too much of a nuisance.
Life didn't get to be really delightful until I turned into a
butterfly. Before that, while I was still a caterpillar,
I couldn't leave the cabbage the livelong day, and all one did
was eat and squ