"She often spoke of you," said Solon. "She seemed to think you would
like to be a help to us if you could."
I turned to greet the woman child, but she had strayed into the house. I
heard her shouts from my bedroom. Then she came running to us, cooing in
helpless joy.
"Candy--candy--Uncle Maje--lovely candy--all pink and dusty."
Well over a face set with the mother's eyes was spilled that which she
had clutched and eaten of,--a thing pink and dusty, in truth, but which
was not candy.
"She does those things constantly," said the dejected father. "I don't
see what I can do to her."
I saw, however, and did it, first wiping the tooth-powder from her face.
She had called me Uncle Maje.
"She's a regular baddix," announced my namesake, gravely judicial. Then,
as if with intention to indicate delicately that the family afforded
striking contrasts, he added, "_I_ ain't a baddix--I can nearly sing."
The children fribbled about us while we talked away the afternoon. The
woman child at last put me to thinking--to thinking that perhaps
butterflies are not meant to be happily caught. With many shouts she had
clumsily enough imprisoned one--a fairy thing of green and bronze--in a
hand so plump that it seemed to have been quilted.
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