came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the
light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face
and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia,
with a quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.

"Don't mind Laurence and me, we're a pair of sillies. You and the
Padre are too good to put up with us the way you do," she said,
coaxingly. "And--we girls do like you, Mr. Flint, whether we're wished
on you or not."

That seductive "we" in that golden voice routed him, horse and foot.
He looked at the small hand on his arm, and his glance went swiftly to
the sweet and innocent eyes looking at him with such frank
friendliness.

"It's better than I deserve," he said, gently enough. "And it isn't
I'm not grateful to the rest of them for liking me,--if they do. It's
that I want to box their ears when they pretend to like my insects,
and don't."

"Being a gentleman has its drawbacks," said I, tentatively.

"Believe _me_!" he spoke with great feeling. "It's nothing short of
doing a life-stretch!"

The boy and girl laughed gaily. When he spoke thus it added to his
unique charm. So profoundly were they impressed with what he had
become, that even what he had been, as they remembered it, increased
their respect and affection. That past formed for him a somber
background, full of half-lights and shadows, against which he stood
out with the revealing intensity of a Rembrandt portrait.

"What I came over to tell you, is that Madame says you're to stay home
this evening, Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, comfortably. "I'm
spending the night with Madame, you're to know, and we're planning a
nice folksy informal sort of a time; and you're to be home."

"Orders from headquarters," commented Laurence.

"All right," agreed the Butterfly Man, briefly.

Mary Virginia shook out her white skirts, and patted her black hair
into even more distractingly pretty disorder.

"I've got to get back to the office--mean case I'm working on,"
complained Laurence. "Mary Virginia, walk a little way with me, won't
you? Do, child! It will sweeten all my afternoon and make my work
easier."

"You haven't grown up a bit--thank goodness!" said Mary Virginia. But
she went with him.

The Butterfly Man looked after them speculatively.

"Mrs. Eustis," he remarked, "is an ambitious sort of a lady, isn't
she? Thinks in millions for her daughter, expects her to make a great
match and all that. Miss Sally Ruth told me sh