The tenant’s wife wanted me to put it in a pasteboard box, but I stubbornly insisted on having the jar, why, I do not know, but I suppose it was because my father’s word was gospel to me, and he had said that the best place to keep my specimens was the cellar window, and I must have thought the jar the nearest equivalent to the cellar.  The Half-luna did not mind in the least, but went on lazily opening and closing its wings, yet making no attempt to fly.  If I had known what it was, or anything of its condition, I would have understood that it had emerged from the cocoon that morning, and never had flown, but was establishing circulation preparatory to taking wing.  Being only a small, very ignorant girl, the greatest thing I knew for sure was what I loved.

Tying my sunbonnet over the top of the jar, I stationed myself on the horse block at the front gate.  Every passing team was hailed with lifted hand, just as I had seen my father do, and in as perfect an imitation of his voice as a scared little girl making her first venture alone in the big world could muster, I asked, “Which way, Friend?”

For several long, hot hours people went to every point of the compass, but at last a bony young farmer, with a fat wife, and a fatter baby, in a big wagon, were going to my city, and they said I might ride.  With quaking heart I handed up my jar, and climbed in, covering all those ten miles in the June sunshine, on a board laid across e wagon bed, tightly clasping the two-gallon jar in my aching arms.  The farmer’s wife was quite concerned about me.  She asked if I had butter, and I said, “Yes, the kind that flies.”

I slipped the bonnet enough to let them peep.  She did not seem to think much of it, but the farmer laughed until his tanned face was red as an Indian’s.  His wife insisted on me putting down the jar, and offered to set her foot on it so that it would not `jounce’ much, but I did not propose to risk it ‘jouncing’ at all, and clung to it persistently.  Then she offered to tie her apron over the top of the jar if I would put my bonnet on my head, but I was afraid to attempt the exchange for fear my butterfly would try to escape, and I might crush it, a thing I almost never had allowed to happen.

The farmer’s wife stuck her elbow into his ribs, and said, “How’s that for the queerest spec’men ye ever see?” The farmer answered, “I never saw nothin’ like it before.”  Then she said, “Aw pshaw!  I didn’t mean in the jar!” Then they both laughed.  I thought they were amused at me, but I had no intention of risking an injury to my Half-luna, for there had been one black day on which I had such a terrible experience that it entailed a lifetime of caution.