ear
to pay for those plates! I need them: I want them. But I don't need a
party. I don't want a party! Madame, don't, don't make me go to any
party!"

"Nonsense!" said my mother. "Clothes, indeed! I shouldn't worry about
clothes, if I were you, John Flint. You came into this world knowing
exactly what to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air! That is
a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not always vouchsafed to
the deserving, either."

"I have a cage full of grubs--most awfully particular grubs, and
they've got to be watched like a sick kid with the--with the whatever
it is sick kids have, anyhow. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one
whole afternoon--"

"You just let me see a single solitary grub have the temerity to hatch
himself out that one afternoon, that's all! They have all the rest of
their nasty little lives to hatch out!"

"Besides, there's a boy lives about five miles from here, and he's
likely to bring me word any minute about something I simply have to
have--"

"I want to see that boy!" She pointed her small forefinger at him,
with the effect of a pistol leveled at his head.

"You are coming to my affair!" said she, sternly. "If you have no
regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia and me, you shall have some for
yourself; if you have none for yourself, then you shall have some for
_us!_"

This took the last puff of wind from the Butterfly Man's sails.

"All right!" he gulped, and committed himself irremediably. "I--I'll
be right here. You say so, and of course I've got to!"

"Of course you will," said my mother, smiling at him charmingly. "I
knew I had only to present the matter in its proper light, and you'd
see it at once. You are so sensible, John Flint. It's such a comfort,
when the gentlemen of one's household are so amenable to reason, and
so ready to stand by one!"

Having said her say, and gotten her way--as she was perfectly sure she
would--Madame left the gentlemen of her household to their own
reflections and devices.

"Parson!" The Butterfly Man seemed to come out of a trance. "Remember
the day you made me let a caterpillar crawl up my hand?"

"Yes, my son."

"Parson, there's a horrible big teaparty crawling up my pants' leg
this minute!"

"Just keep still," I couldn't help laughing at him, "and it will come
down after awhile without biting you. Remember, you got used to the
others in no time."

"Some of 'em stung like the very devil," he reminded me, darkly.