I don’t think I have ever seen two people so mutually delight in each other’s powers as did John Flint and Laurence Mayne.  The Butterfly Man was immensely proud of Laurence’s handsome person and his grace of speech and manner; he had even a more profound respect for his more solid attainments, for his own struggle upward had deepened his regard for higher education.  As for Laurence, he thought his friend marvelous; what he had overcome and become made him in the younger man’s eyes an incarnate proof of the power of will and of patience.  The originality and breadth of his views fired the boy’s imagination and broadened his personality.  The two complemented each other.

The Butterfly Man’s workroom had a fascination for others than Laurence.  It was a sort of Open Question Club.  Here Westmoreland came to air his views with a free tongue and to ride his hobbies with a gallant zest; here the major, tugging at his goatee, his glasses far down on his nose, narrated in spicy chapters the Secret Social History of Appleboro.  Here the judge—­for he, too, had fallen into the habit of strolling over of an evening—­sunk in the old Morris chair, his cigar gone cold in his fingers, reviewed great cases.  And sometimes Eustis stopped by, spoke in his modest fashion of his experiments, and left us all the better for his quiet strength.  And Flint, with his eyes alive and watchful behind his glasses, listened with that air which made one like to tell him things.  Laurence declared that he got his post-graduate course in John Flint’s workroom, and that the Butterfly Man wasn’t the least of his teachers.

I should dearly like to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in that workroom; and in a way it did.  But it really had its inception in a bird’s nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great interest and pleasure.  The tiny mother had learned to accept his approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally.  She allowed him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took food out of his fingers.  He had worked toward that friendliness with great skill and patience, and his success gave him infinite pleasure.  He had a great tenderness for the little brown lady, and he looked forward to her babies with an almost grandfatherly eagerness.  The nest was over in a corner of our garden, in a thick evergreen bush big enough to be called a young tree.

Now on a sunny morning Laurence and I and the Butterfly Man walked in our garden.  Laurence had gotten his first brief, and we two older fellows were somewhat like two old birds fluttering over an adventurous fledgling.  I think we saw the boy sitting on the Supreme Court bench, that morning!

As we neared the evergreen tree the Butterfly Man raised his hand to caution us to be silent.  He wanted us to see his wee friend’s reception of him, and so he went on a bit ahead, to let her know she needn’t be afraid—­we, too, were merely big friends come a-calling.  And just then we heard shrill cries of distress, and above it the louder, raucous scream of the bluejay.