by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
that it did.

There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
Apparently, anybody else hadn't.

"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there
anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
hear?"

And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
of bees:

"_The Butterfly Man!_" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"

Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.
And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to
keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment.
Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then:

"_I?_" in a high and agonized falsetto.

"You!" Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.
"Speech! Speech!" From a corn-club man, joyfully.

"Oh, marmar, look! It's the Butterfly Man, marmar!" squealed a child.

"A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!" For the first time a "hand"
felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.

John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought
to know very well that he hadn't anything to say: what should he have
to say? He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
then, after all, they weren't anything but people, just folks like
himself! When he remembered that his panic subsided. For a moment he
reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand
into his breast pocket.

"Instead of having to listen to me you'd better just look at this,"
said the Butterfly Man. "Because this can talk louder and say more in
a minute than I could between now and Judgment." And he held out
Louisa's dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck
behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. "_I_
haven't got anything to say," said the Butterfly Man. "The best I can
do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull
out of her wishin' curl--and never got. I wish on it that all th