he was dead.

"Poor Dinah Diamond! She was beautiful and clever, and constant and
brave, but she lived unloved and died unlamented because of her bad
temper."

CHAPTER IV.

A SWALLOW-TAILED BUTTERFLY.

"If I can't have the seat I want, I won't have any; and I think you are
real mean, Mollie Elliot! I ain't coming here any more."

These were the words Miss Ruth heard spoken in loud angry tones as she
opened the door connecting her bedroom with the parlor, where the little
girls were assembled, and caught a glimpse of an energetic figure in
pink gingham running across the lawn that separated the minister's house
from his next door neighbor.

"Now, Auntie," said Mollie, in answer to Miss Ruth's look of inquiry, "I
am not in the least to blame. I'll leave it to the girls if I am. Fan
Eldridge is so touchy! She came in a minute ago and Nellie Tyler
happened to be sitting by me, and Fan marched up to her and says, 'I'll
take my seat if you please'; and I said, 'It's no more your seat than it
is Nellie's,' We don't have any particular seats, you know we don't,
Auntie, but sit just as it happens. Well, she declared it was her seat
because she had had it the last two afternoons, and I told Nellie not to
give up to her because she acted so hateful about it, and then she went
off mad. I'm sure I don't care; if she chooses to stay away she can."

"You don't quite mean that, Mollie," her aunt said gravely. "The
Patchwork Society can't afford to lose one of its members, certainly not
for so small a difference as the choice of a seat. We must have Fanny
back, if I give up my seat to her. But come into this room, girls. I
have something pretty to show you. Softly! or you will frighten him
away."

There was a honeysuckle vine trained close to the window, in full bloom,
and darting in and out among the flowers, taking a sip now and then from
a honey-cup, or resting on a leaf or twig, was a large butterfly with
black-velvet wings and spots and bands of blue and red and yellow.

"O you beauty!" said Miss Ruth. "Do you know, girls, of all the moths
and butterflies I have raised from the larvae,--and I have had Painted
Ladies, and Luna Moths, and one lovely Cecropia which was the admiration
of all beholders,--my favorite has always been the Swallow-tailed?
Perhaps it was because he was my first love. I was no older than you,
Nellie, when, half curious and half disgusted, I held at arm's length on
a bit of fennel-stalk, and