“Well, you find many of them, and you are her brother.”

“Yes, but that is different.  Father was reared in Onabasha, and he loved the country.  He trained me his way and mother took charge of Polly.  I don’t quite understand it.  Mother is a great home body herself, but she did succeed in making Polly strictly ornamental.”

“Does Tom Levering need a ‘strictly ornamental’ girl?”

“You are too matter of fact!  Too ‘strictly’ material.  He needs a darling girl who will love him plenty, and Polly is that.”

“Well, then, does the Limberlost need a ‘strictly ornamental’ girl?”

“No!” cried Philip.  “You are ornament enough for the Limberlost.  I have changed my mind.  I don’t want Polly here.  She would not enjoy catching moths, or anything we do.”

“She might,” persisted Elnora.  “You are her brother, and surely you care for these things.”

“The argument does not hold,” said Philip.  “Polly and I do not like the same things when we are at home, but we are very fond of each other.  The member of my family who would go crazy about this is my father.  I wish he could come, if only for a week.  I’d send for him, but he is tied up in preparing some papers for a great corporation case this summer.  He likes the country.  It was his vote that brought me here.”

Philip leaned back against the arbour, watching the grosbeak as it hunted food between a tomato vine and a day lily.  Elnora set him to making labels, and when he finished them he asked permission to write a letter.  He took no pains to conceal his page, and from where she sat opposite him, Elnora could not look his way without reading:  “My dearest Edith.”  He wrote busily for a time and then sat staring across the garden.

“Have you run out of material so quickly?” asked Elnora.

“That’s about it,” said Philip.  “I have said that I am getting well as rapidly as possible, that the air is fine, the folks at Uncle Doc’s all well, and entirely too good to me; that I am spending most of my time in the country helping catch moths for a collection, which is splendid exercise; now I can’t think of another thing that will be interesting.”

There was a burst of exquisite notes in the maple.

“Put in the grosbeak,” suggested Elnora.  “Tell her you are so friendly with him you feed him potato bugs.”

Philip lowered the pen to the sheet, bent forward, then hesitated.

“Blest if I do!” he cried.  “She’d think a grosbeak was a depraved person with a large nose.  She’d never dream that it was a black-robed lover, with a breast of snow and a crimson heart.  She doesn’t care for hungry babies and potato bugs.  I shall write that to father.  He will find it delightful.”

Elnora deftly picked up a moth, pinned it and placed its wings.  She straightened the antennae, drew each leg into position and set it in perfectly lifelike manner.  As she lifted her work to see if she had it right, she glanced at Philip.  He was still frowning and hesitating over the paper.