MOTHS OF THE LIMBERLOST 



confinement of school almost had broken my heart, but 

 it really was time for me to be having some formal 

 education. It had been the greatest possible treat to be 

 allowed to return to the country for a week, but now my 

 one idea was to go home with my treasure. None of my 

 people had seen a sight like that. If they had, they 

 would have told me. 



Borrowing a two-gallon stone jar from the tenant's 

 wife, I searched the garden for flowers sufficiently rare 

 for lining. Nothing so pleased me as some gorgeous 

 deep red peony blooms. Never having been allowed to 

 break the flowers when that was my mother's home, I 

 did not think of doing it because she was not there to 

 know. I knelt and gathered all the fallen petals that 

 were fresh, and then spreading my apron on the ground, 

 jarred the plant, not harder than a light wind might, 

 and all that fell in this manner it seemed right to take. 

 The selection was very pleasing for the yellow glaze of 

 the jar; the rich red of the petals, and the gray velvet of 

 my prize made a picture over which I stood trembling 

 in delight. The moth was promptly christened the 

 Half-luna, because my father had taught me that luna 

 was the moon, and the half moons on the wings were its 

 most prominent markings. 



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 



