Mrs. Burton’s birthday dawned brightly, and it is not surprising that as it was her first natal anniversary since her marriage to a man who had no intention or ability to cease being a lover, her ante-breakfast moments were too fully and happily occupied to allow her to even think of two little boys who had already impressed upon her their willingness and general ability to think for themselves. As for the boys themselves, they woke with the lark, and with a heavy sense of responsibility also. The room of Mrs. Burton’s chambermaid joined their own, and the occupant of that room having been charged by her mistress with the general care of the boys between dark and daylight, she had grown accustomed to wake at the first sound in the boys’s room. On the morning of her mistress’s birthday the first sound she heard was:

“Tod?”

No response could be heard; but a moment later the chambermaid heard:

“T—o—o—od!”

“Ah—h—h—ow!” drawled a voice, not so sleepily but it could sound aggrieved.

“Wake up, dear old Toddie budder. It’ Aunt Alice’s birthday now.”

“Needn’t bweak my earzh open, if ’tis,” whined Toddie.

“I only holloed in one ear, Tod,” remonstrated Budge, “an’ you ought to love dear Aunt Alice enough to have that hurt a little rather than not wake up.”

A series of groans, snarls, whines, grunts, snorts, and remonstrances semi-articulate were heard, and at length some complicated wriggles and convulsive kicks were made manifest to the listening ear, and Budge said:

“That’s right! Now let’s get up an’ get ready. Say; do you know that we didn’t think anything about having some music? Don’t you remember how papa played the piano last mamma’s birthday when she came down-stairs, an’ how happy it made her, an’ we danced around?”

“Aw wight,” said Toddie. “Let’.”

“Tell you what,” said Budge. “Let’ both bang the piano, like mamma an’ Aunt Alice does together sometimes.”

“Oh, yesh!” Toddie exclaimed. “We can make some awful big bangsh before she can get down to tell us to don’t.”

Then there was heard a scurrying of light feet as the boys picked up their various articles of clothing from the corners, chairs, bureau, table, etc., where they had been tossed the night before. The chambermaid hurried to their assistance, and both boys were soon dressed. A plate containing bananas, and another with the hard-earned grapes, were on the bureau, and the boys took them and tiptoed down the stair and into the dining-room.

“Gwacious!” said Toddie, as he placed his plate on the sideboard; “maybe the gwapes an’ buttonanoes has got sour. I guesh we’d better try ’em, like mamma does de milk on hot morningsh when the baddy milkman don’t come time enough.” Toddie suited the action to the word by plucking from a cluster the handsomest grape in sight. “I fink,” said he, smacking his lips with the suspicious air of a professional taster; “I fink dey is gettin’ sour.”

“Let’s see,” said Budge.

“No,” said Toddie, plucking another grape with one hand while with the other he endeavored to cover his gift. “Ize bid enough to do it all myself. Unless,” he added, as a happy inspiration struck him, “you’ll let me help see if your buttonanoes is sour.”

“Then you can only have one bite,” said Budge. “You must let me taste about six grapes, ’cause ’twould take that many to make one of your bites on a banana.”

“Aw wight,” said Toddie; and the boys proceeded to exchange duties, Budge taking the precaution to hold the banana himself, so that his brother should not abstractedly sample a second time, and Toddie doling out the grapes with careful count.

“They are a little sour,” said Budge, with a wry face. “Perhaps some other bunch is better. I think we’d better try each one, don’t you?”

“An’ each one of the buttonanoes, too,” suggested Toddie. “Dat one wazh pretty good, but maybe some of the others isn’t.”

The proposition was accepted, and soon each banana had its length reduced by a fourth, and the grape-clusters displayed a fine development of wood. Then Budge seemed to realize that his present was not as sightly as it might be, for he carefully closed the skins at the ends, and turned the unbroken ends to the front as deftly as if he were a born retailer of fruit.

This done, he exclaimed: “Oh! we want our cards on ’em, else how will she know who they came from?”

“We’ll be here to tell her,” said Toddie.

“Huh!” said Budge; “that wouldn’t make her half so happy. Don’t you know how when cousin Florence gets presents of flowers, she’s always happiest when she’ lookin’ at the card that comes with ’em?”

“Aw wight,” said Toddie, hurrying into the parlor, and returning with the cards of a lady and gentleman, taken haphazard from his aunt’s card-receiver.

“Now, we must write ‘Happy Birthday’ on the backs of ’em,” said Budge, exploring his pockets, and extracting a stump of a lead pencil. “Now,” continued Budge, leaning over the card, and displaying all the facial contortions of the unpractised writer, as he laboriously printed, in large letters, speaking, as he worked, a letter at a time:

“H—A—P—P—E B—U—R—F—D—A—Happy Birthday. Now, you must hold the pencil for yours, or else it won’t be so sweet; that’s what mamma says.”

Toddie took the pencil in his pudgy hand, Budge guided it, and two juvenile heads touched each other and swayed and twisted and bobbed in unison until the work was completed.

“Now, I think she ought to come,” said Budge. (Breakfast-time was still more than an hour distant.) “Why, the rising-bell hasn’t rung yet! Let’s ring it!”

The boys fought for possession of the bell, but superior might conquered and Budge marched up and down the hall, ringing with the enthusiasm and duration peculiar to the amateur.

“Bless me!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, hastening to complete her toilet. “How time does fly—sometimes!”

Mr. Burton saw something in his wife’ face that called for lover-like treatment, but it was not without a sense of injury that he exclaimed, immediately after, as he drew forth his watch:

“I declare! I would make an affidavit that we hadn’t been awake half an hour. Ah! I forgot to wind my watch last night.”

The boys hurried into the parlor.

“I hear ’em trampin’ around!” exclaimed Budge, in great excitement. “There!—the piano’s shut! Isn’t that too mean? Oh, I’ll tell you; here’s Uncle Harry’s violin.”

“But whatsh I goin’ to play on?” asked Toddie, dancing frantically about.

“Wait a minute,” said Budge, dropping the violin, and hurrying to the floor above, from which he speedily returned with a comb. A bound volume of the Portfolio lay upon the table, and opening this, Budge tore the tissue paper from one of the etchings and wrapped the comb in it.

“There!” said he, “you fiddle an’ I’ll blow the comb. Goodness! why don’t they come down? Oh, we forgot to put pennies under the plate, and we don’t know how many years old to put ’em for.”

“An’ we ain’t got no pennies,” said Toddie.

“I know,” said Budge, hurrying to a cabinet in a drawer of which his uncle kept the nucleus of a collection of American coinage. “This kind of pennies,” Budge continued, “isn’t as pretty as our kind, but they’re bigger, an’ they’ll look better on a table-cloth. Now, how old do you think she is?”

“I dunno,” said Toddie, going into a reverie of hopeless conjecture. “She’s about as big as you an’ me put togevver.”

“Well,” said Budge, “you’re four an’ I’m six, an’ four an’ six is ten—I guess ten’ll be about the thing.”

Mrs. Burton’s plate was removed, and the pennies were deposited in a circle. There was some painful counting and recounting, and many disagreements, additions and subtractions. Finally, the pennies were arranged in four rows, two of three each and two of two each, and Budge counted the threes and Toddie verified the twos, and Budge was adding the four sums together, when footsteps were heard descending the stairs.

Budge hastily dropped the surplus coppers upon the four rows, replaced the plate, and seized the comb as Toddie placed the violin against his knee as he had seen small, itinerant Italians do. A second or two later, as the host and hostess entered the dining-room, there arose a sound which caused Mrs. Burton to clap her fingers to her ears, while her husband exclaimed:

“’Scat!”

Then both boys dropped their instruments, Toddie finding the ways of his own feet seriously compromised by the strings of the violin, while both children turned happy faces toward their aunt, and shouted:

“Happy Burfday!”

Mr. Burton hurried to the rescue of his darling instrument, while his wife gave each boy an appreciative kiss, and showed them a couple of grateful tears. Her eye was caught by the fruit on the sideboard, and she read the cards aloud:

“Mrs. Frank Rommery—this is just like her effusiveness. I’ve never met her but once, but I suppose her bananas must atone for her lack of manners. Why, Charley Crewne! Dear me! What memories some men have!”

A cloud came upon Mr. Burton’s brow. Charley Crewne had been one of his rivals for Miss Mayton’s hand, and Mrs. Burton was looking a trifle thoughtful, and her husband was as unreasonable as newly made husbands often are, when Mrs. Burton exclaimed:

“Some one has been picking the grapes off in the most shameful manner. Boys!”

“Ain’t from no Rommerys an’ Crewnes!” said Toddie. “Devsh from me an’ Budgie, an’ we dzust tasted ’em to see if dey’d got sour in the night.”

“Where did the cards come from?” asked Mrs Burton.

“Out of the basket in the parlor,” said Budge. “But the back is the nice part of ’em.”

Mrs. Burton’s thoughtful expression and her husband’s frown disappeared together as they seated themselves at the table. Both boys wriggled vigorously until their aunt raised her plate, and then Budge exclaimed:

“A penny for each year, you know.”

“Thirty-one!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, after counting the heap. “How complimentary!”

“What doesh you do for little boys on your bifeday?” asked Toddie, after breakfast was served. “Mamma does lots of fings.”

“Yes,” said Budge, “she says she thinks people ought to get their own happy by makin’ other people happy. An’ mamma knows better than you, you know, ’cause she’s been married longest.”

Although Mrs. Burton admitted the facts, the inference seemed scarcely natural, and she said so.

“Well—a—a—a—a—anyhow,” said Toddie, “mamma always has parties on her bifeday, an’ we hazh all de cake we want.”

“You shall be happy to-day,” said Mrs. Burton; “for a few friends will be in to see me this afternoon, and I am going to have a nice little luncheon for them, and you shall lunch with us, if you will be very good until then, and keep yourselves clean and neat.”

“Aw wight,” said Toddie. “Izhn’t it most time now?”

“Tod’s all stomach,” said Budge. “Say, Aunt Alice, I hope you won’t forget to have some fruit-cake. That’s the kind we like best.”

“You’ll come home very early, Harry?” asked Mrs. Burton, ignoring her nephew’ question.

“By noon, at furthest,” said the gentleman. “I only want to see my morning letters, and fill any orders that may be in them.”

“What are you coming so early for, Uncle Harry?” asked Budge.

“To take Aunt Alice riding, old boy,” said Mr. Burton.

“Oh! just listen, Tod! Won’t that be jolly? Uncle Harry’s going to take us riding!”

“I said I was going to take your Aunt Alice, Budge,” said Mr. Burton.

“I heard you,” said Budge, “but that won’t trouble us any. She always likes to talk to you better than she does to us. Where are we going?”

Mr. Burton asked his wife, in German, whether the Lawrence-Burton assurance was not charmingly natural, and Mrs. Burton answered in the same tongue that it was, but was none the less deserving of rebuke, and that she felt it her duty to tone it down in her nephews. Mr. Burton wished her joy of the attempt, and asked a number of searching questions about success already attained, until Mrs. Burton was glad to see Toddie come out of a brown study and hear him say:

“I fink dat placesh where de river is bwoke off izh de nicest placesh.”

“What does the child mean?” asked his aunt.

“Don’t you know where we went last year, an’ you stopped us from seein’ how far we could hang over, Uncle Harry?” said Budge.

“Oh! Passaic Falls!” exclaimed Mr. Burton.

“Yes, that’s it,” said Budge.

“Old riverzh bwoke wight in two dere,” said Toddie, “an’ a piece of it’s way up in de air, an’ anuvver piece izh way down in big hole in de stones. Datsh where I want to go widin’.”

“Listen, Toddie,” said Mrs. Burton. “We like to take you riding with us at most times, but to-day we prefer to go alone. You and Budge will stay at home. We sha’n’t be gone more than two hours.”

“Wantsh to go a-widin’,” exclaimed Toddie.

“I know you do, dear, but you must wait until some other day.”

“But I wantsh to go,” Toddie explained.

“And I don’t want you to, so you can’t,” said Mrs. Burton in a tone which would reduce any reasonable person to hopelessness. But Toddie, in spite of manifest astonishment, remarked:

“Wantsh to go a-widin’.”

“Now the fight is on,” murmured Mr. Burton to himself. Then he arose hastily from the table and said:

“I think I’ll try to catch the earlier train, my dear, as I am coming back so soon.”

Mrs. Burton arose to bid her husband good-by, and was kissed with more than usual tenderness, and then held at arm’ length, while manly eyes looked into her own with an expression which she found untranslatable—for two hours, at least. Mrs. Burton saw her husband fairly on his way, and then she returned to the dining-room, led Toddie into the parlor, took him on her lap, wound her arms tenderly about him, and said:

“Toddie, dear, listen carefully to what Aunt Alice tells you. There are some reasons why you boys should not go with us to-day, and Aunt Alice means what she says when she tells you you can’t go with us. If you were to ask a hundred times it would not make the slightest bit of difference. You cannot go, and you must stop thinking about it.”

Toddie listened intelligently from beginning to end, and replied:

“But I wantsh to go.”

“And you can’t. That ends the matter.”

“No, it don’t,” said Toddie; “not a single bittie. I wantsh to go badder dan ever.”

“But you are not going.”

“I wantsh to go so baddy,” said Toddie, beginning to cry.

“I suppose you do, and auntie is very sorry for you, but that does not alter the case. When grown people say ‘No!’ little boys must understand that they mean it.”

“But what I wantsh izh to go a-widin’ wif you.”

“And what I want is, that you shall stay at home; so you must. Let us have no more talk about it now. Shouldn’t you like to go into the garden and pick some strawberries all for yourself?”

“No, I’d like to go widin’.”

“Toddie,” said Mrs. Burton, “don’t let me hear one more word about riding.”

“Well, I want to go.”

“Toddie, I will have to punish you if you say any more on this subject, and that will make me very unhappy. You don’t want to make auntie unhappy on her birthday, do you?”

“No; but I do want to go a-widin’.”

“Listen, Toddie,” said Mrs. Burton, with an imperious stamp of her foot, and a sudden loss of her entire stock of patience. “If you say one more word about that trip, I shall lock you in the attic chamber, where you were the day before yesterday, and Budge shall not be with you.”

Toddie gave vent to a torrent of tears, and screamed:

“A—h—h—h! I don’t want to be locked up, an’ I do want to go a-widin’!”

Toddie suddenly found himself clasped tightly in his aunt’ arms, in which position he kicked, pushed, screamed and roared during the passage of two flights of stairs. The moment of his final incarceration was marked by a piercing shriek which escaped from the attic-window, causing the dog Terry to retire precipitately from a pleasing lounging place on the well-curb, and making a passing farmer to rein up his horses and maintain a listening position for the space of five minutes. Meanwhile Mrs. Burton descended to the parlor, more flushed, untidy and angry than any one had ever seen her. She soon encountered the gaze of her nephew Budge, and it was full of solemnity, inquiry and reproach.

“How would you like to be carried up-stairs screamin’ an’ put in a lonely room, just ’cause you wanted to go ridin’?” Budge asked.

Mrs. Burton was unable to imagine herself in any such position, but replied:

“I should never be so foolish as to keep on wanting what I knew I could not have.”

“Why!” exclaimed Budge. “Are grown folks as smart as all that?”

Mrs. Burton’s conscience smote her not overlightly, and she hastened to change the subject, and to devote herself assiduously to Budge, as if to atone for some injury which she might have done his brother. An occasional howl which fell from the attic-window increased her zeal for Budge’s comfort; under each one, however, her resolution grew weaker, and, finally, with a hypocritical excuse to Budge, she hurried up to the door of Toddie’s prison and said through the keyhole:

“Toddie?”

“What?”

“Will you be a good boy, now?”

“Yesh, if you’ll take me a-widin’.”

Mrs. Burton turned abruptly away, and simply flew down the stairs. Budge, who awaited her at the foot, instinctively stood aside, and exclaimed:

“I thought you was goin’ to tumble! Why didn’t you bring him down?”

“Bring who?”

“Oh, I know what you went up-stairs for,” said Budge. “Your eyes told me all about it.”

“You’re certainly a rather inconvenient companion,” said Mrs. Burton, averting her face, “and I want you to run home and ask how your mamma and baby-sister are. Don’t stay long: remember that luncheon will be earlier than usual to-day.”

Away went Budge, and Mrs. Burton devoted herself to thought. Unquestioning obedience had been her own duty since she could remember, yet she was certain that her will was as strong as Toddie’. If she had been always able to obey, certainly the unhappy little boy in the attic was equally capable; why should he not do it? Perhaps, she admitted to herself, she had inherited a faculty in this direction, and perhaps—yes, certainly, Toddie had done nothing of the sort. How was she to overcome the defect in his disposition; or was she to do it at all? Was it not something with which no one temporarily having a child in charge should interfere?

An occasional scream from Toddie helped to unbend the severity of her principles, but suddenly her eye rested upon a picture of her husband, and she seemed to see in one of the eyes a quizzical expression. All her determination came back in an instant with heavy re-enforcements, and Budge came back a few moments later. His bulletins from home, and his stores of experiences en route consumed but a few moments, and then Mrs. Burton proceeded to dress for her ride. To exclude Toddie’s screams she closed her door tightly, but Toddie’s voice was one with which all timber seemed in sympathy, and it pierced door and window apparently without effort. Gradually, however, it seemed to cease, and with the growing infrequency of his howls and the increasing feebleness of their utterance, Mrs. Burton’s spirits revived. Dressing leisurely, she ascended to Toddie’s prison to receive his declaration of penitence and to accord a gracious pardon. She knocked softly at the door and said:

“Toddie?”

There was no response, so Mrs. Burton knocked and called with more energy than before, but without reply. A terrible fear occurred to her; she had heard of children who screamed themselves to death when angry. Hastily she opened the door, and saw Toddie, tear-stained and dirty, lying on the floor, fast asleep. She stooped over him to be sure that he still breathed, and then the expression on his sweetly parted lips was such that she could not help kissing it. Then she raised the pathetic, desolate little figure softly in her arms, and the little head dropped upon her shoulder and nestled close to her, and one little arm was clasped tightly around her neck, and a soft voice murmured:

“I wantsh to go a-widin’.”

Just then Mr. Burton entered, and, with an exasperating affectation of ingenuousness and uncertainty asked:

“Did you conquer his will, my dear?”

His wife annihilated him with a look, and led the way to the dining-room; meanwhile, Toddie awoke, straightened himself, rubbed his eyes, recognized his uncle, and exclaimed:

“Uncle Harry, does you know where we’ goin’ dis afternoon? We’s goin’ a-widin’.”

Mr. Burton hid in his napkin the half of his face that was below his eyes, and his wife wished that his eyes might have been hidden too, for never in her life had she been so averse to having her own eyes looked into.

The saintliness of both boys during the afternoon’s ride took the sting out of Mrs. Burton’s defeat. They gabbled to each other about flowers and leaves and birds, and they assumed ownership of the few summer clouds that were visible, and made sundry exchanges of them with each other. When the dog Terry, who had surreptitiously followed the carriage and grown weary, was taken in by his master they even allowed him to lie at their feet without kicking, pinching his ears or pulling his tail.

As for Mrs. Burton, no right-minded husband could wilfully torment his wife upon her birthday, so she soon forgot the humiliation of the morning, and came home with superb spirits and matchless complexion for the little party. Her guests soon began to arrive, and after the company had assembled Mrs. Burton’s chambermaid ushered in Budge and Toddie, each in spotless attire, and the dog Terry ushered himself in, and Toddie saw him and made haste to interview him, and the two got inextricably mixed about the legs of a light jardiniÈre, and it came down with a crash, and then the two were sent into disgrace, which suited them exactly, although there was a difference between them as to whether the dog Terry should seek and enjoy the seclusion upon which his heart was evidently intent.

Then Budge retired with a face full of brotherly solicitude, and Mrs. Burton was enabled to devote herself to the friends to whom she had not previously been able to address two consecutive sentences.

Mrs. Burton occasionally suggested to her husband that it might be well to see where the boys were and what they were doing, but that gentleman had seldom before found himself the only man among a dozen comely and intelligent ladies, and he was too conscious of the rarity of such experiences to trouble himself about a couple of people who had unlimited ability to keep themselves out of sight, so the boys were undisturbed for the space of two hours. A sudden summer shower came up in the meantime, and a sentimental young lady requested the song “The Rain upon the Roof,” and Mrs. Burton and her husband began to render it as a duet; but in the middle of the second stanza Mrs. Burton began to cough, and Mr. Burton sniffed the air apprehensively, while several of the ladies started to their feet, while others turned pale. The air of the room was evidently filling with smoke.

“There can’t be any danger, ladies,” said Mrs. Burton. “You all know what the American domestic servant is. I suppose our cook, with her delicate sense of the appropriate, is relighting her fire, and has the kitchen door wide open, so that all the smoke may escape through the house instead of the chimney. I’ll go and stop it.”

The mere mention of servants had its usual effect; the ladies began at once that animated conversation which this subject has always inspired, and which it will probably continue to inspire until all housekeepers gather in that happy land, one of whose charms it is that the American kitchen is undiscernible within its borders, and the purified domestic may stand before her mistress without needing a scolding. But one nervous young lady, whose agitation was being manifested by her feet alone, happened to touch with the toe of her boot the turn-screw of a hot-air register. Instantly she sprang back and uttered a piercing scream, while from the register there arose a thick column of smoke.

“Fire!” screamed one lady.

“Water!” shrieked another.

“Oh!” shouted several in chorus.

Some ran up-stairs, others into the rainy street, the nervous young lady fainted, a business-like young matron, who had for years been maturing plans of operation in case of fire, hastily swept into a table-cover a dozen books in special morocco bindings, and hurried through the rain with them to a house several hundred feet away, while the faithful dog Terry, scenting the trouble afar off, hurried home and did his duty to the best of his ability by barking and snapping furiously at every one, and galloping frantically through the house, leaving his mark upon almost every square yard of carpet. Meanwhile Mr. Burton hurried up-stairs coatless, with disarranged hair, dirty hands, smirched face, and assured the ladies that there was no danger, while Budge and Toddie, the former deadly pale, and the latter almost apoplectic in color, sneaked up to their own chamber.

The company dispersed; ladies who had expected carriages did not wait for them, but struggled to the extreme verge of politeness for the use of such umbrellas and waterproof cloaks as Mrs. Burton could supply. Fifteen minutes later the only occupant of the parlor was the dog Terry, who lay, with alert head, in the centre of a large Turkish chair. Mrs. Burton, tenderly supported by her husband, descended the stair, and contemplated with tightly compressed lips and blazing eyes the disorder of her desolated parlor. When, however, she reached the dining-room and beheld the exquisitely set table, to the arrangement of which she had devoted hours of thought in preceding days and weeks, she burst into a flood of tears.

“I’ll tell you how it was,” said Budge, who appeared suddenly and without invitation, and whose consciousness of good intention made him as adamant before the indignant frowns of his uncle and aunt, “I always think bonfires is the nicest things about celebrations, an’ Tod an’ me have been carryin’ sticks for two days to make a big bonfire in the back yard to-day. But it rained, an’ rainy sticks won’t burn. So we thought we’d make one in the cellar, ’cause the top is all tin, an’ the bottom’s all dirt, an’ it can’t rain in there at all. An’ we got lots of newspapers and kindlin’-wood, an’ put some kerosene on it, an’ it blazed up beautiful, an’ we was just comin’ up to ask you all down to look at it, when in came Uncle Harry, an’ banged me against the wall an’ Tod into the coal heap, an’ threw a mean old dirty carpet on top of it, an’ wetted it all over.”

“Little boysh never can do anyfing nysh wivout bein’ made to don’t,” said Toddie. “Dzust see what an awful big splinter I got in my hand when I was froin’ wood on de fire! I didn’t cry a bit about it den, ’cause I fought I was makin’ uvver folks happy, like de Lord wants little boysh to. But dey didn’t get happy, so now I’m goin’ to cry ’bout de splinter!”

And Toddie raised a howl which was as much superior to his usual cry as things made to order generally are to the ordinary supply.

“We had a torchlight procession too,” said Budge. “We had to have it in the attic, but it wasn’t very nice. There wasn’t any trees up there for the light to dance around on, like it does on ’lection-day nights. So we just stopped, an’ would have felt real doleful if we hadn’t thought of the bonfire.”

“Where did you leave the torches?” asked Mr. Burton, springing from his chair, and lifting his wife to her feet at the same time.

“I—I dunno,” said Budge, after a moment of thought.

“Froed ’em in a closet so’s not to dyty de nice floor wif ’em,” said Toddie.

Mr. Burton hurried up-stairs and extinguished a smoldering heap of rags, while his wife, truer to herself than she imagined she was, drew Budge to her, and said, kindly:

“Wanting to make people happy, and doing it, are two very different things, Budge.”

“Yes, I should think they was,” said Budge, with an emphasis which explained much that was left unsaid.

“Little boysh is goosies for tryin’ to make big folksh happy at all,” said Toddie, beginning again to cry.

“Oh, no, they’re not, dear,” said Mrs. Burton, taking the sorrowful child on her lap. “But they don’t always understand how best to do it, so they ought to ask big folks before they begin.”

“Den dere wouldn’t be no s’prises,” complained Toddie. “Say, izh we goin’ to eat all dis supper?”

“I suppose so, if we can,” sighed Mrs. Burton.

“I guesh we can—Budgie an’ me,” said Toddie. “An’ won’t we be glad all them wimmens wented away!”

That evening, after the boys had retired, Mrs. Burton seemed a little uneasy of mind, and at length she said to her husband:

“I feel guilty at never having directed the boys’s devotions since they have been here, and I know no better time than the present in which to begin.”

Mr. Burton’s eyes followed his wife reverently as she left the room. The service she proposed to render the children she had sometimes performed for himself, with results for which he could not be grateful enough, and yet it was not with unalloyed anticipation that he softly followed her up the stair. Mrs. Burton went into the chamber and found the boys playing battering-ram, each with a pillow in front of him.

“Children,” said she, “have you said your prayers?”

“No,” said Budge; “somebody’s got to be knocked down first. Then we will.”

A sudden tumble by Toddie was the signal for devotional exercises, and both boys knelt beside the bed.

“Now, darlings,” said Mrs. Burton, “you have made some sad mistakes to-day, and they should teach you that, even when you want most to do right, you need to be helped by somebody better. Don’t you think so?”

“I do,” said Budge. “Lots.”

“I don’t,” said Toddie. “More help I getsh, de worse fings is. Guesh I’ll do fings all alone affer dish.”

“I know what to say to the Lord to-night, Aunt Alice,” said Budge.

“Dear little boy,” said Mrs. Burton. “Go on.”

“Dear Lord,” said Budge, “we do have the awfullest times when we try to make other folks happy. Do, please, Lord, please teach big folks how hard little folks have to think before they do things for ’em. An’ make ’em understand little folks every way better than they do, so that they don’t make little folks unhappy when they try to make big folks feel jolly. Make big folks have to think as hard as little folks do. Amen! Oh yes, an’ bless dear mamma an’ the sweet little sister baby. How’s that, Aunt Alice?”

Mrs. Burton did not reply, and Budge, on turning, saw only her departing figure, while Toddie remarked:

“Now it’s my tyne. Dear Lord, when I getsh to be a little boy anzel up in hebben, don’t let growed-up anzels come along whenever I’m doin’ anyfing nysh for ’em, an’ say ’don’t’s or tumble me down in heaps of nashty old black coal. Dere! Amen!”