Poor Bee! She had studied butterflies, 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 anticipation 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 butterfly 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....
"A good illustration of this fact is found in the Disipsus Butterfly, which belongs to a group which is not especially protected, but is often the prey of insect-eating creatures. This butterfly has assumed almost the exact color and markings of the milkweed butterfly, which is distasteful to birds, and hence enjoys peculiar freedom from the attacks of enemies. Because this adaption of one form to another evidently serves the purpose of defense this phenomenon has been called 'protective mimicry.'"