“Mr. Flint,” said Mary Virginia one afternoon, rubbing salt into his smarting wounds, “Mr. Flint, I am so glad all the girls like you so much.  You fascinate them.  They say you are such a profoundly clever and interesting man, Mr. Flint!  Why, some of those girls are perfectly demented about you!”

“Demented,” said he, darkly, “is the right word for them when it comes down to fussing about me.”  Now Laurence had just caught him in his rooms, and, declaring that he looked overworked and pale, had dragged him forcibly outside on the porch, where we were now sitting.  Mary Virginia, in a white skirt, sport coat, and a white felt hat which made her entrancingly pretty, had been visiting my mother and now strolled over to John Flint’s, after her old fashion.

“I feel like making the greatest sort of a fuss about you myself,” she said honestly.  “Anyhow, I’m mighty glad girls like you.  It’s a good sign.”

“If they do—­though God knows I can’t see why—­I’m obliged to them, seeing it pleases you!” said Flint, without, however, showing much gratitude in eyes or voice.  “To tell you the truth, it looks to me at times as if they were wished on me.”

Mary Virginia tried to look horrified, and giggled instead.

“If I could only make any of them understand anything!” said the Butterfly Man desperately, “but I can’t.  If only they really wanted to know, I’d be more than glad to teach them.  But they don’t.  I show them and show them and tell them and tell them, over and over and over again, and the same thing five minutes later, and they haven’t even listened!  They don’t care.  What do they take up my time and say they like my butterflies for, when they don’t like them at all and don’t want to know anything about them?  That’s what gets me!”

Laurence winked at Mary Virginia, shamelessly.

“Bugs!” said he, inelegantly.  “That’s what’s intended to get you, you old duffer!”

“Mr. Flint,” said Mary Virginia, with dancing eyes.  “I don’t blame those girls one single solitary bit for wanting to know all about—­butterflies.”

“But they don’t want to know, I tell you!” Mr. Flint’s voice rose querulously.

“My dear creature, I’d be stuck on you myself if I were a girl,” said Laurence sweetly.  “Padre, prepare yourself to say, ’Bless you, my children!’ I see this innocent’s finish.”  And he began to sing, in a lackadaisical manner, through his nose: 

    “Now you’re married you must obey,
     You must be true to all you say,
     Live together all your life—­”

No answering smile came to John Flint’s lips.  He made no reply to the light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish.  Mary Virginia, with a quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.

“Don’t mind Laurence and me, we’re a pair of sillies.  You and the Padre are too good to put up with us the way you do,” she said, coaxingly.  “And—­we girls do like you, Mr. Flint, whether we’re wished on you or not.”