Now, Mary Virginia’s eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint’s hands lying loosely upon his knees.  Her face brightened.

“Padre,” she suggested suddenly, “why don’t you let him help you with your butterflies?  Look at his hands!  Why, they’re just exactly the right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to stretch wings without loosening a scale.  He could be taught in a few lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be!  And you do so need help with those insects of yours, Padre—­I’ve heard you say so, over and over.”

The child was right—­John Flint did have good hands—­large enough, well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned, sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a prize-fighter.

“If you think there’s any way I could help the parson for awhile, I’d be proud to try, miss.  It’s true,” he added casually, with a sphinx-like immobility of countenance, “that I’m what might be called handy with my fingers.”

“We’ll call it settled, then,” said Mary Virginia happily.

Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little sister.  When they were younger the boy had often complained that she might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he’d been a brother.  In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.

My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.

“Parson,” said he, abruptly, “Parson, you folks are swells, ain’t you?  The real thing, I mean, you and Madame?  Even the yellow nigger’s a lady nigger, ain’t she?”

“I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is—­Madame.  And Clelie is a good servant.”

“But you were born a swell, weren’t you?” he persisted.  “Old family, swell diggings, trained flunkies, and all that?”

“I was born a gentleman, if that is what you mean.  Of an old family, yes.  And there was an old house—­once.”

“How’d you ever hit the trail for the Church?  I wonder!  But say, you never asked me any more questions than you had to, so you can tell me to shut up, if you want to.  Not that I wouldn’t like to know how the Sam Hill the like of you ever got nabbed by the skypilots.”

“God called me through affliction, my son.”

“Oh,” said my son, blankly.  “Huh!  But I bet you the best crib ever cracked you were some peach of a boy before you got that ‘S.O.S.’”

“I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a sinner.”

“I suppose,” said he tentatively, after a pause, “that I’m one hell of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle, ain’t I?”