She took the bag to her
room, hurriedly releasing its contents, but there was not another yellow
one. Her mother had said some had been confined in the case in the
Limberlost. There was still a hope that an Emperor might be among them.
She peeped at her mother, who still slept soundly.
Elnora took a large piece of mosquito netting, and ran to the swamp.
Throwing it over the top of the case, she unlocked the door. She reeled,
faint with distress. The living moths that had been confined there in
their fluttering to escape to night and the mates they sought not only
had wrecked the other specimens of the case, but torn themselves to
fringes on the pins. A third of the rarest moths of the collection
for the man of India were antennaless, legless, wingless, and often
headless. Elnora sobbed aloud.
"This is overwhelming," she said at last. "It is making a fatalist of
me. I am beginning to think things happen as they are ordained from the
beginning, this plainly indicating that there is to be no college, at
least, this year, for me. My life is all mountain-top or canon. I wish
some one would lead me into a few days of 'green pastures.' Last night I
went to sleep on mother's arm, the moths all secured, love and college,
certainties. This morning I wake to find all my hopes wrecked. I simply
don't dare let mother know that instead of helping me, she has ruined
my collection. Everything is gone--unless the love lasts.
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