Bee and Butterfly Part 6

"It's not fair," she sobbed in angry resentment. "She has her father, and her mother too; and now she has to take mine. Oh, I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"

"Bee!" Adele had seen her cousin leave the house, and had followed her.

"Go away," cried Bee, sitting up and speaking vehemently. "Go away, Adele Raymond! I hate you!"

"I don't see why you should," whimpered Adele. "I shouldn't think you would care so much for such a little thing. I shouldn't mind it a bit, if I were in your place."

"Yes, you would," blazed Bee. "If you had not seen your father since you were a little girl, and when he came home he thought some one else was you, you wouldn't like it a bit more than I do. Adele Raymond, you changed those pictures on purpose."

"It was only in fun, Bee. Truly, I did not mean it any other way. I never dreamed that your father would come back just because of it."

"But you did know that if he thought the picture was mine he would think I was pretty. How could he help it? It would give him a wrong idea of how I looked, and when he came he would be disappointed. You knew that.

And then you ran out just as soon as you heard the carriage."

"I didn't do that on purpose anyway, Bee. I was singing, you know, when I heard the wheels, and I ran out without thinking."

"But I heard Aunt Annie tell you to wait in the parlor until I had greeted father," went on Bee accusingly. "You ran right out to the door where the light would fall on you, so that he could not help but see you first. It was done on purpose. I know it was. I'll never trust you again in anything."

"I didn't think," said Adele again. "I didn't know that he was going to take me for his daughter, even though I did send him my picture. Anyway you ought to be glad that I sent it. He would not have come if I hadn't."

"That's just it," uttered Bee with a pitiful sob. "If it were just a mistake of the moment I could get over it, even though that would be bad enough. But it's knowing that he poured over your picture, thinking that it was his daughter. It's knowing that he was glad that you were beautiful when I am not. It's knowing that it was for you that he came home, and not for me at all. Oh! he never will care for an ugly old thing like me now."

"Yes, he will. Everybody likes you best when they know us both for a time. Then your mind--"

"Bother the mind!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other girl fiercely. "Mind doesn't count. It's only being pretty that counts, and you know it, Adele Raymond. Doesn't everyone indulge you just because you are pretty? And now my father--and he's the only father I've got, too--now he's just like everybody else. Oh, I hate you!"

"I don't want you to hate me, Bee," cried Adele, her own tears beginning to flow. "You never cared before that I was pretty."

"I wouldn't care now if father didn't--didn't--" Bee broke down completely, unable to finish.

"Won't you be friends, Bee?" pleaded Adele.

"No; I won't," answered Bee with decision.

"And won't you let me stay with you this Summer? I don't like grandma's.

It's poky there." Adele never once mentioned Bee's telling who had changed the pictures. She knew without asking that Bee would not.

"I don't want you here," replied Bee angrily. "You want to stay because father admires you, but you shan't do it. I want him to myself, and I've a right to have him. He's my father!"

"Please, Bee," coaxed Adele. Bee always gave in to her pleadings, and she could not believe that she would not do so now.

"I am going to my room," announced Beatrice, rising. "And I don't want to be followed there."

She walked abruptly away, leaving Adele weeping softly.

Chapter V

Protective Mimicry

"Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt, Nothing's so hard but search will find it out."

--_Herrick._

The next day Mr. and Mrs. Henry Raymond with Adele went home. For the first time in their lives the girls took leave of each other with coldness. The older people affected not to notice the lack of warmth in their adieus, believing that time and absence would heal the breach between them. Before their departure Mrs. Raymond had called her niece to her for a little talk.

"Bee, dear," she said, "you don't know how sorry I am for what has occurred. It was a most unfortunate mistake, but you must put all thought of it out of your mind. Be your own bright self again."

"I want to be pretty, Aunt Annie," burst from Bee, whose eyes were swollen and red from much weeping.

"That is nonsense, Beatrice," spoke her aunt sharply. "You cannot change your looks. 'What can't be cured must be endured.' Your personal appearance heretofore has caused you no concern, and there is no reason that it should begin to trouble you now. Beauty is not everything.

Sometimes the plainest countenance becomes charming when stirred by the emotions of a n.o.ble heart."

"Yes; I know," said Beatrice dully. "I know all that. I've heard it ever since I can remember. My father would say the same thing, I dare say, yet his eyes follow Adele constantly, and he scarcely looks at me.

People are always preaching how little beauty matters, and then they turn round and show that it makes all the difference in the world. Take Adele and me, Aunt Annie. Haven't I always had to stand back for her?

You know that I have. I have given up my prettiest things to her, and been second in everything. But she shall not be first with my father.

She shall not," she repeated pa.s.sionately.

"You do not realize what you are saying, Beatrice," said Mrs. Raymond coldly, surprised and shocked by the girl's bitterness. It was such an ordinary occurrence for Adele to be admired that she did not fully grasp what it meant to her niece in the present instance. Then, too, Beatrice had always seemed to join in the admiration of her cousin so warmly that the lady was astonished at her feeling.

"I do not see why you should exhibit so much emotion over a simple occurrence," she continued after a moment. "It was a thing that might happen to anyone, and you are exaggerating the importance of it. Think no more about it, but make yourself so lovable that no one will care whether you are pretty or not. It lies in your power to win your father's affection, but it can not be done by continuing in your present frame of mind." And Bee found herself dismissed.

Soon afterward good-byes were said, and the girl's anguish increased as she saw how reluctant her father seemed to bid Adele farewell. To the young all things are tragic, and this which had befallen seemed nothing short of a calamity to Bee. At length, however, they were gone, and then Doctor Raymond turned to his daughter with a smile:

"Well, Beatrice, we are to have the house to ourselves, it appears. I presume that you have some studies, or some way by which you can amuse yourself for a few days. I shall be very busy for a time preparing reports, and arranging my specimens for the university; after which I shall be at liberty to make my little girl's acquaintance."

William Raymond did not mean to be cruel; but he was a scientist much absorbed in his work. He did have a great deal before him. Perhaps too he was not quite at ease with himself for the warmth which he had discovered toward his niece; perhaps, too, there lurked in his heart a faint feeling of disappointment that his daughter was not the lovely girl who had left in place of this silent, sullen appearing maiden who returned a pa.s.sive:

"Very well, father."

Poor Bee! She had studied b.u.t.terflies, her father's specialty, on purpose to surprise him. She had thought that he would let her be with him when he unpacked the rare specimens which he had obtained abroad, and she had pictured the delightful chats they would enjoy together.

The reality was so different from the antic.i.p.ation that her heart swelled with the injustice of the thing, and she wept until the fountain of her tears was dry. The housekeeping which was to have been her pleasure served now to distract her mind. She threw herself into it with so much fervor as to extort a remonstrance from Aunt Fannie, the old colored woman who was the head factotum of the kitchen.

"You all jest a gwine to kill yerse'f," she said reprovingly. "'Tain't no mannah ob use to scrub an' scour twel a fly can't stan' up nowhar.

Take hit easy, Miss Bee."

"It's all that I can do for father," responded Bee, and the old woman was silenced.

So the days went by. Every morning she saw her father at breakfast, and received his formal greeting as gracefully as she could. The meal over, Doctor Raymond disappeared in his study to be seen no more until evening. He was never a demonstrative man, and his reserve seemed like indifference to his daughter. Beatrice pondered upon his unconcern until she became possessed with the one idea that somehow, some way, she must do something to attract his attention.

"It's all because I'm not pretty," thought the unhappy child one morning when this state of things had gone on for a week. "I must do something to make him like me; but what?"

Listlessly she took up her b.u.t.terfly book and turned the pages idly. All at once her eye was caught by these words:

"One of the most singular and interesting facts in the animal kingdom is what has been styled mimicry. Certain colors and forms are possessed by animals which adapt them to their surroundings in such wise that they are in a greater or less degree secured from observation and attack....