New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Villages -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"'Breaking a Butterfly,' Lissy, please! Now don't tell me you never
heard of it, because I am perfectly sure Bobby never did, and that makes
three of us."
"I never did, Kitty, honestly I didn't. I don't believe it's in the
library, unless it is one of those old, _old_ ones that haven't been
catalogued yet. Old Mrs. Spooner left them to us, you know. They are in
the inner room, waiting to be catalogued. I can't seem to get time----"
"I'll go look; may I? And, oh, Bobby, do you want to be a _perfect_
angel and look up _Orchis Spectabilis_ in Gray? We had such a dispute
last night, Aunt Johanna and I! She says its habitat is--well, find out
for me, there's a dear!"
Kitty vanished into the inner room, leaving the other two staring
blankly at each other.
"Spec--_what_ did she say, Bobby?"
"_Spectabilis!_" Bobby spoke hardily, as became a Corona senior, though
he had not "taken" Latin since his first year in High School.
"Respectable, I think it means; something bound in gray, she said. Let's
see what there is in gray, Lissy! Here's the Life of Hannah More; that
would be respectable, what?"
"I don't believe she means that!"
Melissa was fluttering very prettily. It was a most wonderful thing to
be alone with Bobby in the Library, where she so often dreamed of him,
little wistful gray dreams with only here and there a gleam of
rose-color! How tall he was, how handsome, how strong! how like that
beautiful bust! and Melissa glanced at the Olympian Hermes. Well,
Bobby's hair did curl, but otherwise----
"I don't believe she means that," Melissa repeated. "Nobody has ever
taken that out since I've been here. I looked into it once, dusting, you
know; it looked awfully poky. Perhaps----" Melissa put forth the
suggestion timidly, "she meant Gray was the person who wrote it. There's
the Elegy, you know!"
"Of course!" Bobby responded heartily. "Sure thing! 'Curfew shall not
ring to-night!' We learned that at High School, didn't we, Lissy?" He
smiled kindly on the girl. "Gray's the chap; trot him out!"
Melissa had not the heart to correct him. How could she? Why should she?
Men didn't have to know poetry, except ministers, she supposed, and the
like of that. She meekly brought the works of Thomas Gray, and they
looked through them together, making a very pretty picture, Kitty
thought, as she peeped through the crack of the door. Bobby's fair
hair--all men ought to have fair hair, of course--was bent over
Melissa's little dark head, both looking at the same page. He sighed,
which Kitty thought distinctly encouraging.
"Seems rather piffle, doesn't it?" asked the youth dolefully, looking up
from "The Progress of Poesy." "Kitty knows an awful lot about books,
doesn't she, Lissy? I suppose you do, too!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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