Say and Seal, Volume II

"Seeing other things, I suppose. However, now you speak of it, I believe that butterfly has flown over me—sometime."

"Please to imagine yourself a gay rover for the nonce," said Mr. Linden, leading the doctor persuasively into the middle of the floor. "Just suppose you are a Purple Emperor—will you doctor? Miss Essie wants a story and forfeits,—I shall leave you to gratify her." But he himself went to give Miss Faith a seat. That was done with a very different manner from the gay, genial way in which he had addressed the doctor: it was genial enough, certainly, but grave.

"You do not feel well?" he said, as he wheeled up an easy chair for her. It was spoken too low for any one else to hear.

"Yes, I do,"—said Faith quickly. But her face flushed deep, and her eye though it glanced towards him, failed timidly of meeting his; and her voice had lost all the spring of pleasure.

"Then cannot you keep the promise you made about a disagreeable evening?" The tone was very low still—(he was arranging her footstool and chair) a little concerned too, a little—or Faith fancied it—but indeed she was not quite sure what the third part was; and then the doctor began his work.

For a minute or two she did not hear him, or heard without heed. She was thinking over Mr. Linden's question and struggling with it. For its slight tone, of remonstrance perhaps, only met and stirred into life the feeling she was trying to keep down. Her lip took one of its sorrowful curves for an instant; but then Dr. Harrison came towards them.

"What insect on the face of the earth, Linden, will you be? What does he resemble most, Miss Derrick?"

"I am not particular about being on the face of the earth," said Mr.Linden,—"the air will do just as well."

The doctor was waiting for Faith's answer. Under the exigency of the moment she gave it him, glancing up first at the figure beside her, perhaps to refresh her memory—or imagination—and smiling a little as she spoke.

"I don't think of any he is like, Dr. Harrison."

"Do you think I am like a purple butterfly?" said the doctor.

"Yes, a little,"—said Faith. But it was with a face of such childlike soberness that the doctor looked hard at her.

"What do you think you are like yourself?" said he; not lightly.

"I think I am a little like an ant," said Faith.

The doctor turned half round on his heel.

"'Angels and ministers of grace'!" was his exclamation. "Most winged, gentle, and etherial of all the dwellers in, or on, anthills,—know that thy similitude is nothing meaner than a flower. You must take the name of one, Miss Faith—all the ladies do—what will you be?"

"What will you be?" Mr. Linden repeated,—"Mignonette?—that is even below the level of some of your anthills."

"If you please,"—she said.

"Or one of your Rhododendrons?" said the doctor—"that is better; for you have the art—or the nature, indeed,—of representing all the tints of the family by turns—except the unlovely ones. Be a Rhodora!"

"No"—said Faith—"I am not like that—nor like the other, but I will be the other."

"Mignonette"—said the doctor. "Well, what shall we call him? what is he like?"

"I think," said Faith, looking down very gravely, not with the flashing eye with which she would have said it another time,—"he is most like a midge."

The little laugh which answered her, the way in which Mr. Linden bent down and said, "How do you know, Miss Faith?" were slightly mystifying to Dr. Harrison.

"I don't know,"—she said smiling; and the doctor with one or two looks of very ungratified curiosity left them and returned to his post.

"What are they going to play, Mr. Linden?" said Faith. The doctor's explanation, given to the rest generally, she had not heard.

"Do you know what a family connexion you have given me, Miss Faith?—The proverb declares that 'the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing.'"

An involuntary little caught breath attested perhaps Faith's acquiescence in the truth of the proverb; but the doctor's words prevented the necessity of her speaking.

"Miss Essie—Ladies and gentlemen! Please answer to your names, and thereby proclaim your characters. Mrs. Stoutenburgh, what are you?"

"A poppy, I think," said Mrs. Stoutenburgh laughing. "I like to be beforehand with the public."

"Will you please to name your lord and master? He is incapable of naming himself."

"I think you've named him!" said Mrs. Stoutenburgh with a gay toss of her pretty head. "I'm not learned in insects, doctor,—call him anything that eats up butter-flies."

"Mr. Stoutenburgh will—you be a grub?" said the doctor. "Or a beetle?I don't know anything else that I—as a butterfly—dislike more."

"No, I'll be a cricket—I'm so spry," said the Squire,—"and I'll be down upon you in some other form, doctor."

"You'll have to fly higher first," said the doctor. "Miss Essie declares herself to be a purple Althaea. Miss Davids—an evening primrose. Miss Deacon—a cluster rose. Miss Fax—a sweet pink. Miss Chester—a daisy. Miss Bezac—what shall I put you down?" The butterfly was making a list of his flowers and insects, and cards had been furnished to the different members of the party, and pencils, to do as much for themselves.

"I'd as lieve be balm as anything else, if I knew how," said MissBezac; "but I shouldn't call that putting me down."

"That fits, anyhow," said Squire Stoutenburgh.

"'Balm for hurt minds'"—said Dr. Harrison writing. "Miss Julia De Staff is a white lily. Miss Emmons—a morning glory. Mrs. Churchill a peony. Miss Derrick is mignonette. Mrs. Somers—?"

"I may as well be lavender," said Mrs. Somers. "You say I am in a good state of preservation."

"What is Mr. Somers?"

"Mr. Somers—what are you?" said his wife.

"Ha!—I don't know, my dear," said Mr. Somers blandly. "I think I am—a—out of place."

"Then you're a moth," said the doctor. "That is out of place too, in most people's opinion. Miss Delaney, I beg your pardon—what are you?"

"Here are the two Miss Churchills, doctor," said Miss Essie—"hyacinth and laburnum."

"I am sure you have been sponsor, Miss Essie. Well this is my garden of flowers. Then of fellow insects I have a somewhat confused variety. Mr. Stoutenburgh sings round his hearth in the shape of a black cricket. Mr. Linden passes unnoticed in the invisibility of a midge—nothing more dangerous. Mr. Somers does all the mischief he can in the way of devouring widows' houses. The two Messrs. De Staff" (two very spruce and moustachioed young gentlemen) "figure as wasp and snail—one would hardly think they belonged to the same family—but there is no accounting for these things. Mr. George Somers professes to have the taste of a bee—but luckily the garden belongs to the butterfly."

"In other words, some one has put Dr. Harrison in a flutter," said Mrs.Stoutenburgh.

"I haven't begun yet," said the doctor wheeling round to face her; "when I do, my first business will be to cut you up, Mrs. Stoutenburgh."

"Miss Faith," said Mr. Linden while the roll went on, "I have not forgotten your question,—they, and we, are going to play a French game called 'the Butterfly and the Flowers;' wherein I, a midge, am in humble attendance oh a sprig of mignonette. Whenever our butterfly gardener chooses to speak the name of any flower or insect, that Flower or insect must reply: when he speaks of the gardener, you flowers must extend one hand in token of welcome, we insects draw back in dismay: if the gardener brings his watering-pot, or there falls a shower of rain, you must hold up your head for joy—I must kneel down for fear. If the sunshine is mentioned, we are free to rejoice together—standing up and making demonstrations. You may reply, Miss Faith, either in your own words or quotations, so that you mention some one of your companions; but if you fail to speak, or break any other rule, you must pay a forfeit first and redeem it afterwards."

"I may mention either insect or flower?" said Faith.

"Yes, just what you like."

"If everybody is ready," said the doctor, "I will begin by remarking that I find myself in an 'embarras de richesses'—so many sweets around me that I—a butterfly—know not which to taste first; and such an array of enemies, hostile alike to the flowers and me, that I know not which to demolish first. I hope a demolishing rain will fall some of these days—ah! that is gratifying! behold my enemies shrinking already, while the flowers lift up their heads with pleasure and warm themselves in the rays of the sun. What is mignonette doing?"