Bildungsromans; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Illegitimate children -- Fiction
hundreds of Silver-washed Fritillaries
appeared over the tables. How the fat French bourgeois stared
to see these mad English boys chasing butterflies in their
sunny bee-haunted garden. But how lovely the Fritillaries
looked, set upside down to show their powdered green and rosy
wings washed by silver streaks. Perhaps the most exciting
catch of all happened, close to the shutting in of a September
dusk, in the avenue of pollarded acacias. Michael saw the moth
first on the lowest bough of a tree. It was jet-black marked
with thick creamy stripes. Neither he nor Hands had a net, and
they trembled with excitement and chagrin. Michael threw a
stone rather ineffectively and the moth changed its position,
showing before it settled down on a higher branch underwings
of glowing vermilion.
“Oh, what can it be?” Michael cried, dancing.
“It’s frightfully rare,” squeaked Hands.
“You watch it carefully, while I scoot for a net,” commanded Michael.
He tore along up the darkening drive, careless of ghosts or travelling
seamen bent on murder and robbery. He rushed into the hall and shouted,
‘A terribly rare moth in the drive! Quick, my net!’ and rushed back to
the vigilant Hands. The others followed, and after every cunning of the
hunter had been tried, the moth was at last secured and after a search
through Kirby’s Butterflies and Moths pronounced to be a Jersey Tiger,
not so rare, after all, in fact very common abroad. But it was a
glorious beast when set, richly black, barred and striped with damasked
cream over a flame of orange-scarlet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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