Sure enough, in one second the round button burst in the middle, and the hot silver gushed up like a little fairy fountain of water, not more than quarter of an inch high: in the same instant it fell, cooled, and there was a sort of flower, not unlike a rose, of frosted silver.
"Dere! ven you are in New York, you can take dis to jeweller, and he put pin on it; and you shall vear it, and tell to all peoples you haf seen it ven it vas made by old man in de Colorado mountains."
Nelly took the pretty thing in her hands and looked at it with delight. She had never had any thing so pretty, she thought; and she thanked Mr. Kleesman again and again, as she bade him good-by.
"Oh, I see you again: I see you ven you go in stage. I not say good-by to-day," he said, and looked after her lovingly as she ran down the steps.
Ulrica had a stormy time of it with Sachs, the tin-man, before she could get him to cut out the make-believe buttons for Nelly's gown. He was at work on a big boiler, and he did not want to stop. Ulrica's broken English grew so much more broken when she was angry, that hardly any one could understand her; and William Sachs, who was a German, knew English very little better than Ulrica: so between them they made sad work of it.
"I stamp my foot at him," said Ulrica, telling Nelly the tale: "I stamp at him my foot, and I take out of his hand his big hammer vat he pound, pound viz all time dat I am speak, so dat he not hear my speak. I take out his hand, and I frow down on floor; and I say, 'I not stir till you my buttons haf cut for mine child;' and ven he see I not stir, he take tools and he cut, cut, cut, and all the time he swear at me; he call me 'tam Swede woman;' but I not care. And here are gown: now you come in and put on."
So Nelly went in, and Ulrica helped her to undress. When she saw Nelly's white neck, she stooped down and kissed her, and said.—
"Mine child haf white skin: like your skin."
The red bodice fitted Nelly very well; and she looked lovely in it. It had a low collar, all covered with the shining tin buttons; and in the front there was a square space of white muslin, and the tin buttons were sewed on all round this. The blue petticoat was too long: it lay on the ground two inches or more. Ulrica looked at it dismayed.
"Ach!" she said: "ach! you haf not so tall I tink. I make him now in von little more as short." And down on the floor she sat, and hemmed up the skirt in a wonderfully quick time.