. "At least, I have heard it read, father.
Professor Lawrence read it to the class one day."

Doctor Raymond frowned. Bee had not yet learned that there are occasions
when ignorance is bliss. No one likes to have either his anecdotes or
witticisms anticipated. She might have said with perfect sincerity:

"Yes, father; but I should like to hear it again."

"Well, I haven't heard it at all," said Adele prettily. "I am not so
learned as Bee."

"You will doubtless appreciate it then," spoke the naturalist, turning
to her with pleasure apparent in both voice and manner. "Would you care
to hear the lines?"

"Nothing would delight me so much, Uncle William."

How beautiful Adele looked with her golden hair; how delicate and pearly
was her lovely neck; what sweet eyes were hers, blue as a sky full of
sunshine. Doctor Raymond's glance dwelt upon her with admiration.

"What a lovely girl you are!" he exclaimed voluntarily. Adele colored
with pleasure.

"I did not think that you saw beauty in anything but your butterflies,"
she said archly.

"Indeed I do. I am very susceptible to beauty in any form. But surely
you also see beauty in this?" He handed her a frame in which was mounted
a gorgeous Scarlet Admiral. "Is not this strikingly beautiful? Note with
what a brilliant red the secondaries are bordered, and the velvety
blackness of the fore wings. It is among the last of our hibernating
butterflies to seek its winter quarters, and is most interesting in many
ways."

"It is beautiful," cried Adele with enthusiasm. "Oh! it just makes me
want to study butterflies too when I see such pretty ones."

"I do not wonder that the old Greeks used the butterfly as an emblem of
the soul," commented the Lepidopterist, well pleased with her
appreciation of the insect. "Even as the imago bursts from its chrysalis
and, throwing aside the bonds that held it a lowly creeping thing to
earth, mounts upward on gauzy wings, so the soul casts off its
earth-bound body at length and also mounts upward on wings of hope. The
symbol of the butterfly is found on all their tombs and monuments."

"It is a pretty thought," commented his niece sweetly, "but you don't
know how anxious I am to hear about Sir Joseph Banks and The Emperor."

"To be sure," ejaculated Doctor Raymond hastily. "I had forgotten."
Then, in a rich voice of no little charm, he recited the ode. Adele
laughed merrily as he finished.

"How can you bear to repeat anything like th