Budge & Toddie; Or, Helen's Babies at Play. Habberton John

you?” asked Mr. Burton, with a gaze as reverent as if the answer would be by absolute authority.

      “Certainly!” replied the lady, adding a grace or two to her fully aroused sense of command.

      “By Jove!” exclaimed her husband, “what a remarkable coincidence! That is just what I determined upon when I first took charge of those boys. And yet——”

      “And yet you failed,” said Mrs. Burton. “How I wish I had been in your place!”

      “So do I, my dear,” said Mr. Burton; “or, at least, I would wish so if I didn’t realize that if you had had charge of those children instead of I, there wouldn’t have occurred any of the blessed accidents that helped to make you Mrs. Burton.”

      The lady smiled lovingly, but answered:

      “I may have the opportunity yet; in fact—oh, it’s too bad that I haven’t yet learned how to keep anything secret from you—I have arranged for just such an experiment. And I’m sure that Helen and Tom, as well as you, will learn that I am right.”

      “I suppose you will try it while I’m away on my spring trip among the dealers?” queried Mr. Burton hastily. “Or,” he continued, “if not, I know you love me well enough to give me timely notice, so I can make a timely excuse to get away from home. When is it to be?”

      Mrs. Burton replied by a look which her husband was failing to comprehend when there came help to him from an unexpected source. There were successive and violent rings of the door-bell, and as many tremendous pounds, apparently with a brick, at the back door. Then there ensued a violent slamming of doors, a trampling in the hall as of many war-horses, and a loud, high-pitched shout of, “I got in fyst,” and a louder, deeper one of “So did I!” And then, as Mr. and Mrs. Burton sprang from their chairs with faces full of apprehension and inquiry the dining-room door opened and Budge and Toddie shot in as if propelled from a catapult.

      “Hello!” exclaimed Budge, by way of greeting, as Toddie wriggled from his aunt’ embrace, and seized the tail of the family terrier. “What do you think? We’ve got a new baby, and Tod and I have come down here to stay for a few days; papa told us to. Don’t seem to me you had a very nice breakbux,” concluded Budge, after a critical survey of the table.

      “And it’s only jus’ about so long,” said Toddie, from whose custody the dog Terry had hurriedly removed his tail by the conclusive proceeding of conveying his whole body out of doors—“only jus’ so long!” repeated Toddie, placing his pudgy hands a few inches apart, and contracting every feature of his countenance, as if to indicate the extreme diminutiveness of the new heir.

      “IT’S ONLY JUS’ ABOUT SO LONG”.

      Mrs. Burton kissed her nephews and her husband with more than usual fervor and inquired as to the sex of the new inhabitant.

      “Oh, that’s the nicest thing about it,” said Budge. “It’s a girl. I’m tired of such lots of boys—Tod is as bad as a whole lot, you know, when I have to take care of him. Only, now we’re bothered, ’cause we don’t know what to name her. Mamma told us to think of the loveliest thing in all the world, so I thought about squash-pie right away; but Tod thought of molasses candy, and then papa said neither of ’em would do for the name of a little girl. I don’t see that they’re not as good as roses and violets, and all the other things that they name little girls after.”

      During the delivery by Budge of this information, Toddie had been steadily exclaiming, “I—I—I—I—I—I——!” like a prudent parliamentarian who wants to make sure of recognition by the chair. In his excitement, he failed to realize for some seconds that his brother had concluded, but he finally exclaimed: “An’ I—I—I—I—I’m goin’ to give her my turtle, an’ show her how to make mud pies wif currants in ’em.”

      “Huh!” said Budge, with inexpressible contempt in his tones. “Girls don’t like such things. I’m going to give her my blue necktie, and take her riding in the goat-carriage.”

      “Well, anyhow,” said Toddie, with the air of a man who was wresting victory from the jaws of defeat, “I’ll give her caterpillars. I know she’ll be sure to like them, ’cause they’e got lovely fur jackets all heavenly-green an’ red an’ brown, like ladies’s djesses.”

      “And you don’t know what lots of prayin’ Tod and me had to do to get that baby,” said Budge. “My! It just makes me ache to think about it! Whole days and weeks and months!”

      “Yesh,” said Toddie. “An’ Budgie sometimes was goin’ to stop, ’caush he fought the Lord was too busy to listen to us. But I just told him that the Lord was our biggesht papa, an’ just what papas ought to be, an’ papa at home was just like papas ought to be. An’ the baby comeded. Oh! Yesh, an’ we had to be awful good too. Why don’t you be real good an’ pray lots? Then maybe you’ll get a dear, sweet, little baby!”

      The temporary reappearance of the dog, Terry, put an end to the dispute, for both boys moved toward him, which movement soon developed into a lively chase. Being not unacquainted with the boys, and knowing their tender mercies to be much like those of the wicked, Terry sought and found a forest retreat and the boys came panting back and sat dejectedly upon the well-curb. Mrs. Burton, who stood near the window, leaning upon her husband’s shoulder, looked tenderly upon them, and murmured:

      “The poor little darlings are homesick already. Now is the time for my reign to begin. Boys!”

      Both boys looked up at the window. Mrs. Burton gracefully framed a well-posed picture of herself as she leaned upon the sill, and her husband hung admiringly upon her words. “Boys, come into the house, and let’s have a lovely talk about mamma.”

      “Don’t want to talk about mamma,” said Toddie, a suspicion of a snarl modifying his natural tones. “Wantsh the dog.”

      “But mammas and babies are so much nicer than dogs,” pleaded Mrs. Burton, after a withering glance at her husband, who had received Toddie’s remark with a titter.

      “Well, I don’t think so,” said Budge, reflectively. “We can always see mamma and the baby, but Terry we can only see once in a while, and he never wants to see us, somehow.”

      “My dear,” said Mr. Burton humbly, “if you care for the experience of another, my advice is that you let those boys come out of their disappointment themselves. They’ll do it in their own way in spite of you.”

      “There are experiences,” remarked Mrs. Burton, with chilling dignity, “which are useful only through the realization of their worthlessness. Anyone can let children alone. Darlings, did you ever hear the story of little Patty Pout?”

      “No,” growled Budge, in a manner that would have discouraged any one not conscious of having been born to rule.

      “Well, Patty Pout was a nice little girl,” said Mrs. Burton, “except that she would sulk whenever things did not happen just as she wanted them to. One day she had a stick of candy, and was playing ‘lose and find’ with it; but she happened to put it away so carefully that she forgot where it was, so she sat down to sulk, and suddenly there came up a shower and melted that stick of candy, which had been just around the corner all the while.”

      “Is Terry just around the corner?” asked Toddie, jumping up, while Budge suddenly scraped the dirt with the toes of his shoes and said:

      “If Patty’d et up her candy while she had it, she wouldn’t have had any trouble.”

      Mr. Burton hurried into the back parlor to laugh comfortably, and without visible disrespect, while Mrs. Burton remembered that it was time to ring the cook and chambermaid to breakfast. A moment or two later she returned to the window, but the boys were gone; so was a large stone jar, which was one of those family heirlooms which are abhorred by men but loved as dearly by women as ancestral robes or jewels. Mrs. Burton had that mania for making