                    The Butterfly
    "I will take her," said the butterfly; and he made her an offer. But the mint stood silent and stiff, as she listened to him. At last she said, 
     "Friendship, if you please; nothing more. I am old, and you are old, but we may live for each other just the same; as to marrying -- no; don't let us appear ridiculous at our age."
     And so it happened that the butterfly got no wife at all. He had been too long choosing, which is always a bad plan. And the butterfly became what is called an old bachelor.
     It was late in the autumn, with rainy and cloudy weather. The cold wind blew over the bowed backs of the willows, so that they creaked again. It was not the weather for flying about in summer clothes; but fortunately the butterfly was not out in it. He had got a shelter by chance. It was in a room heated by a stove, and as warm as summer. "I could exist here," he said, "well enough."
