the same creature, and how from a low-born worm that groveled and
crawled could be born this bright ethereal being--all light and beauty
and color--that seemed fitted only for the sky.

"Aunt Susan listened to our talk a while and then repeated a text of
Scripture:--

"'Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his
glorious body?'"

"While we talked the butterfly grew stronger and more beautiful, until
at last, spreading his wings to their widest extent, he darted high into
the air and we lost him. But from the day I took the green worm from the
fennel-bush in Aunt Susan's garden I date my introduction to a
delightful study which I have followed all my life as I have found
opportunity. So you see it is no wonder I am fond of the swallow-tailed
butterfly; and I have another reason, for once on a time I tamed one so
that it sucked honey from my finger."

"Auntie, you are joking!"

"Indeed, no. It was a poor little waif which, mistaking chimney heat for
warm spring weather, hatched himself out of season, and whose life I
prolonged by providing him with food."

"The dear little thing! Tell us about it, please."

"Well, I had put away some chrysalids for the winter in a closet in my
sleeping-room, and one day my nurse--I was ill at the time--heard a
rustling in the box where they lay and brought it to me for
investigation; and, behold! when I opened it there was a full-grown
swallow-tail, who, waking too soon from his winter's nap, left the soft
bed of cotton where his companions lay sleeping side by side and, wide
awake and ready to fly, was impatiently waiting for some one to let him
out into the sunshine.

"But the March sunshine was fitful and pale, and the cold wind would
have chilled him to death before night; so we resolved to keep him
indoors. We gave him the liberty of the room, and he fluttered about the
plants in the window, now and then taking a flight to the ceiling,
where, I am sorry to say, he bruised his delicate wings; but he seemed
to learn wisdom by experience, for after a while he contented himself
with a lower flight. Every day my bed was wheeled close to the window,
and I amused myself for hours watching my pretty visitor. He would
greedily suck a drop of honey, diluted with water, from the leaf of a
plant or from the end of my finger, and by sight or smell, perhaps by
both senses, soon learned where to go for his dinner.

"And so he lived and thrived for a fortnight