"Tie up your portfolio, quick!" said the Button Boy. His face was working. His eyes shone! They outshone his buttons seven dozen times.
"What are you going to do, you foolish fellow," cried the Uncle, "run with it? It will take the prize from under your very nose and make a show of you, too."
"Will you trust me?" asked the Button Boy of the Back, not minding his Uncle. "You know I've often said I owed you one, but I don't mean it."
"O Buttons!" cried the Back, "will you? will you really do it?"
"There, Uncle," cried the Button Boy stripping off his jacket, "I can't run in that tight thing. And if you choose to count this, you may. I give up the money, sir."
In vain the Uncle shouted after him, "You young rascal! I'll be done with you; what an exhibition you'll make now;" away he ran, fleet as a deer. Then the Uncle clapped his hands vociferously, burst out with--"I _knew_ there was something in that lad!" chuckled till he was purple in the face, and finally sat down by the Back and blew his nose very hard.
"Look here," said the Uncle to the Button Boy that evening, "I had a purpose in putting you in this livery. You may guess, if you like, what it was and I think it hasn't been a failure. Now, if you will go home with me for the rest of the year we will hold to the contract and suspend the buttons."
"Really," said the Mother, with her mild smile, "already, Brother, I don't recognize my Boy; and I should like to ask you--"
"I am very much afraid," interrupted the Father, busily, "you will let his mind vegetate; he is certainly not as thoroughly intellectual as before he wore those buttons. I should like to ask you--"
"My dear Uncle," broke in the Sharp-eyed Sister, "if you will please invent some kind of head-gear for the brains as good as this for the heart, I--"
"Yes," said the Elder Brother hastily, "I should like to ask you--"
But the Uncle was seized with such a severe sneezing fit that no one could ask him after all.
Among the flock of geese that toddled in and out of Farmer Hardy's barnyard last winter, hissing in protest at the ice which covered the pond so that there was no chance of a swimming match, was one remarkable neither for its beauty, nor its grace. This particular goose was gray, and was looked upon with no especial favor by Mrs. Hardy, who had great pride in all the flock but the gray one.