“Is it of the Scarlet Woman?” I said.
He started, and roared, “The Scarlet--!” then, conscious of his
mistake, dropped his voice to a panic whisper.
“There’s no such moth,” said he. “If you mean _heraclia dominula_, the
scarlet tiger, come and I’ll show you one.”
He persuaded me to sit by him on the roof slope, and gingerly opened
the book away from me.
“Don’t touch,” he said. “It’s called _Fasti Sanctorum Naturæ
Cultoribus Proprii_.”
“Is that Latin?” I asked.
“Yes,” he growled; but he looked at me rather curiously. “It means The
Naturalist’s Calendar of the Saints. How did you know?”
“O, I know,” I said.
He turned some leaves, while scanning me covertly and sourly; and I
exclaimed becomingly over their contents. On each was a picture of a
saint, hastily illuminated, and of many insects most beautifully
coloured after nature. The saints, it is true, were pigmies, and the
moths life size; but it was through the former that this uncivilised
Churchman justified himself in a secular hobby. He was, as I came to
learn presently, a crazy collector of the small game of fields and
hedges, and had only drifted into the Church after a particularly fine
specimen of the Painted Lady, or some such immoral creature.
I tried to appreciate in order to conciliate him; but I could see that
my flattery was not expert, or perhaps fulsome enough for his taste.
Presently, on the score that my mere neighbourhood threatened the
lustre of his illuminations, he shut the book, and placed it
discontentedly by his side.
“Did you do it all by yourself?” I asked.
“Ay,” he grunted.
“And why did you bring it up here, when”--