Bill's head came up. "You didn't tell me that. You said that some day I might be able to paint the pictures for books and magazine articles you might write."
The Butterfly Man threw up his hands in a comic gesture of dismay. "There you go, spilling the beans and letting out our secrets. And we were going to keep all this under cover until we were ready to be famous."
Bill's eyes, direct, burning, were on his face. "You meant it, didn't you?"
"I meant it," Tom Woods said in a changed voice. "We both like butterflies. If you can make the grade drawing them, and if I can make the grade writing about them, we ought to come through. But it means years."
"What's years?" Bill demanded, and bent over his drawing.
Bert's gaze had gone from the man, to the boy, and back to the man again. What's years! The light from the window fell upon Bill absorbed in what he was doing . . . and upon the stump that had once been a whole leg. Something in Bert stirred. He realized then, in a sort of sudden intuition, that Tom Woods, with the instinct of a great heart, was going out of his way to kindle ambition and purpose before a boy's soul could grow sick with the knowledge of its handicap.
To-day the man, unaided, cooked the meal, for Bert was glued to the back of Bill's chair watch-
