his letters instead of the State
Attorney, for I shan't use them unless I have to.... Parson, you
remember a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and what Laurence
said when I wanted to wring the little crook's neck? That the thing
isn't to reform the jay but to keep him from doing it again? That's
the cue."

He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat package of them, and
put it in a table drawer behind a stack of note-books. And then he
reached over and touched the other package, the letters written in
Mary Virginia's girlish hand.

"Here's her happiness--long, long years of it ahead of her," he said
soberly. "As for you, you take back those tools, and go say mass."

Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day, and the breath
of the morning blew sweetly over the world. The Church was full of a
clear and early light, the young pale gold of the new Spring sun.
None of the congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into the
sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into St. Stanislaus'
hands the IOU of Slippy McGee.

CHAPTER XX

BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS

There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of
those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any
exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord God
walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a
morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in
the door of his tent.

There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a
heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of
"_April! April!_" that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little
People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the
golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now
they were out, "Little flames of God" dancing in the Sunday sunlight.
The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her
fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful
Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted
sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.

Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays
exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of
gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and
blossom with amethyst--the wisteria was a-borning. And one