I think the Butterfly Man and Major Cartwright buy those papers because they think they are funny!  After they have read and sniggered, they donate them to Clelie and Daddy January.  And presently Clelie distributes them to a waiting colored countryside, which wallpapers its houses with them.  I have had to counsel the erring and bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle eyes of inhuman creations whose unholy capers have made futile many a prayer.  And yet the Butterfly Man likes them!  Is it not to wonder?

He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me eye them askance.

“Did you know,” said he, over his coffee, “that Laurence came in this morning on the six-o’clock?  January had him out in the garden showing off the judge’s new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church and shook hands over the fence.  It was all I could do to keep from shouting that all’s right with the world, and all he had to do was to be glad.  I didn’t know how much I cared for that boy until this morning.  Parson, it’s a—­a terrible thing to love people, when you come to think about it, isn’t it?  I told him you were honing to see him:  and that we’d be looking for him along about eleven.  And I intimated that if he didn’t show up then I’d go after him with a gun.  He said he’d be here on the stroke.”  After a moment, he added gently:  “I figured they’d be here by then—­Madame and Mary Virginia.”

“What!  You have induced Laurence to come while she is here—­without giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?” I said, aghast.  “You are a bold man, John Flint!”

The study windows were open and the sweet wind and the warm sun poured in unchecked.  The stir of bees, the scent of honey-locust just opening, drifted in, and the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and lilts and flutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops.  We could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and mothers shepherding little flocks of children in their Sunday best, trotting along with demure Sabbath faces on their way to church.  The Butterfly Man looked out, waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, followed the flight of a tanager’s sober spouse, and sniffed the air luxuriously.

“Oh, somebody’s got to stage-manage, parson,” he said at last, lightly enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes.  “And then vanish behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up ’The Voice that Breathed o’er Eden,’” he finished, without a trace of bitterness.  “So I sent Madame a note by a little nigger newsie.”  His eyes crinkled, and he quoted the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to exercise a meticulous care:  “Brer Rabbit say, ‘I trus’ no mistake.’”

“You are a bold man,” said I again, with a respect that made him laugh.  Then we went over to his rooms to wait, and while we waited I tried to read a chapter of a book I was anxious to finish, but couldn’t, my eyes being tempted by the greener and fresher page opening before them.  Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read his papers.