“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, and I had hopes of keeping him till spring; but one cold night the furnace fire went out, and in the morning my pretty swallow-tail lay dead on the window-sill.  Wasn’t it a pity?

“Oh,” said Florence, “I like to hear about butterflies!  Will you please tell us about some of the other kinds you have kept?”

“Tell us about that big fellow you said every body made a fuss over.  Ce-ce—­I can’t remember what you called him.”

“Cecropia!” said Susie, promptly.  “Yes, do, Auntie! if you are not tired.”

If Ruth Elliot had been ever so weary I think she would have forgotten it at sight of the interested faces of her audience; but in fact she was not in the least tired, but was as pleased to tell as they were to listen to the story of

THE CECROPIA MOTH.

“One day in November,” she said, “a man who used to do odd jobs about the place for my father, and whom we always called Josh,—­his name was Joshua Wheeler,—­left his work to bring to the house and put into my hand a queer-looking pod-shaped package firmly fastened to a stout twig.  It was of a rusty gray color and looked as much like a thick wad of dirty brown paper as any thing I can think of.

“’I found this ‘ere cur’us lookin’ thing,’ he said, ’under a walnut-tree on the hill yonder, where I was rakin’ up leaves—­an’, thinks I, there’s some kind of a crittur stored away inside, an’ Miss Ruth she’s crazy arter bugs an’ worms an’ sich like varmints, an’ mebbe she’d like to see what comes out o’ this ‘ere; so I’ve fetched it along.’