paying, or offering to pay those who would take the money, for bugs and
butterflies, and I've known people who sold that banker Indian stuff.
Once I heard that his pipe collection beat that of the Government at the
Philadelphia Centennial. Those things have come to have a value."

"Well, there's about a bushel of that kind of valuables piled up in the
woodshed, that belongs to Elnora. At least, I picked them up because she
said she wanted them. Ain't it queer that she'd take to stones, bugs,
and butterflies, and save them. Now they are going to bring her the very
thing she wants the worst. Lord, but this is a funny world when you get
to studying! Looks like things didn't all come by accident. Looks as if
there was a plan back of it, and somebody driving that knows the road,
and how to handle the lines. Anyhow, Elnora's in the wagon, and when I
get out in the night and the dark closes around me, and I see the stars,
I don't feel so cheap. Maggie, how the nation did Kate Comstock do
that?"

"You will keep on harping, Wesley. I told you she didn't do it. Elnora
did it! She walked in and took things right out of our hands. All Kate
had to do was to enjoy having it go her way, and she was cute enough
to put in a few questions that sort of guided Elnora. But I don't know,
Wesley. This thing makes me think, too. S'pose we'd taken Elnora when
she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our
own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the
woman that living alone, learning to think for herself, and taking all
the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?"

"You bet your life!" cried Wesley, warmly. "Loving anybody don't hurt
them. We wouldn't have done anything but love her. You can't hurt a
child loving it. She'd have learned to work, to study, and grown into a