"I don't see what there is to laugh at," he said with some dignity.
"You don't--that's just it, you don't, and that's what's so funny."
"I'm not half as funny as _you_ are, but I don't laugh at you."
"Y--you w-would if you didn't p-pity me so much," she gasped between giggles.
"I don't pity you at all. And I think you're extremely foolish to laugh so much at nothing."
She had taken out her handkerchief and now composed herself with difficulty while Jerry's ruffled dignity in silence preened at its feathers. She watched him furtively, I'm sure, between dabs with her handkerchief and at last stopped laughing, got up and offered him her hand.
"I've made you angry," she said. "I'm sorry."
He found that he had taken her hand and was looking at it. The words he used in describing it were these: "It was small, soft and warm, Roger, and seemed alive with vitality, but it was timid, too, like a young thrush just fallen from its nest." So far as I could discover, he didn't seem to know what to do with her hand, and before he decided anything she had withdrawn it abruptly and was turning away.
"I'm going now," she said calmly. "But I've enjoyed being here, awfully. It was very nice of you not to--to throw me over the wall."
"But you might have had me arrested, which would have been worse." She opened her tin box. "It's your butterfly, of course. You can have it, if you like."
"Oh, I wouldn't take it for anything. Besides, that's no good."
"Oh, well, I'll keep it as a souvenir of our acquaintance. Good-by, Jerry." She smiled.
"But you weren't. I shouldn't have laughed."
"I think I like you better when you laugh than when--when you're 'bottled up'."
"But I mustn't laugh at _you_. I didn't mean to. I just--couldn't help. You've forgiven me, haven't you?"
She had taken up her hat and now walked away upstream. Jerry followed.
"Will you really come next year?" he asked. "I--I should like to show you my specimens."
"Next year! Next year is a long way off. You know, I don't belong here. I'm only visiting."
She clambered down into the bed of the stream toward the iron railing. Two of the bars, as he could now see, were bent inward at the bottom.
When she reached the railing she turned and flashed a smile up at him.