So Elnora entered the auditorium a second time.  Her face was like the brightest dawn that ever broke over the Limberlost.  No matter about the lumbering shoes and skimpy dress.  No matter about anything, she had the books.  She could take them home.  In her garret she could commit them to memory, if need be.  She could prove that clothes were not all.  If the Bird Woman did not want any of the many different kinds of specimens she had collected, she was quite sure now she could sell ferns, nuts, and a great many things.  Then, too, a girl made a place for her that morning, and several smiled and bowed.  Elnora forgot everything save her books, and that she was where she could use them intelligently—­everything except one little thing away back in her head.  Her mother had known about the books and the tuition, and had not told her when she agreed to her coming.

At noon Elnora took her little parcel of lunch and started to the home of the Bird Woman.  She must know about the specimens first and then she would walk to the suburbs somewhere and eat a few bites.  She dropped the heavy iron knocker on the door of a big red log cabin, and her heart thumped at the resounding stroke.

“Is the Bird Woman at home?” she asked of the maid.

“She is at lunch,” was the answer.

“Please ask her if she will see a girl from the Limberlost about some moths?” inquired Elnora.

“I never need ask, if it’s moths,” laughed the girl.  “Orders are to bring any one with specimens right in.  Come this way.”

Elnora followed down the hall and entered a long room with high panelled wainscoting, old English fireplace with an overmantel and closets of peculiar china filling the corners.  At a bare table of oak, yellow as gold, sat a woman Elnora often had watched and followed covertly around the Limberlost.  The Bird Woman was holding out a hand of welcome.

“I heard!” she laughed.  “A little pasteboard box, or just the mere word ‘specimen,’ passes you at my door.  If it is moths I hope you have hundreds.  I’ve been very busy all summer and unable to collect, and I need so many.  Sit down and lunch with me, while we talk it over.  From the Limberlost, did you say?”

“I live near the swamp,” replied Elnora.  “Since it’s so cleared I dare go around the edge in daytime, though we are all afraid at night.”

“What have you collected?” asked the Bird Woman, as she helped Elnora to sandwiches unlike any she ever before had tasted, salad that seemed to be made of many familiar things, and a cup of hot chocolate that would have delighted any hungry schoolgirl.

“I am afraid I am bothering you for nothing, and imposing on you,” she said.  “That ‘collected’ frightens me.  I’ve only gathered.  I always loved everything outdoors, so I made friends and playmates of them.  When I learned that the moths die so soon, I saved them especially, because there seemed no wickedness in it.”