“Trouble want to play buttons!” exclaimed the little fellow. “If no play, Trouble sit down in de mud!” and he pulled his hands away from both Ted and Janet and started toward a little mud puddle at one side of the garden path.
Jan looked at Ted, not knowing what to do.
“No play button game, Trouble sit in de mud!” cried the little fellow; and, tiny “tyke” that he was, he stuck the toe of one shoe in the puddle.
“Yes, Jan will play the button game!” cried his sister. “Don’t sit in the mud!” She ran over and caught Trouble by the hand again. “I’ll take him up to the house and get out the button bag,” said Jan to Ted. “You can keep on looking for Skyrocket. Mother won’t like it if Trouble gets all muddy, and he will sit down in it if I don’t keep hold of him.”
“All right,” agreed Ted. “You can play with him. I’ll go and see if I can find Skyrocket. But if that man wakes up you come and tell me. I want to ask him if he saw our dog.”
A little later, when Janet had taken Trouble back to the house, and while Ted was walking down in the peach orchard, whistling and calling to Skyrocket, the boy heard an answering signal.
“Hello!” called Ted. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” was the answer, which, if not just the right way to answer, told Teddy what he wanted to know.
“Oh, hello, Tom!” he called, as Tom Taylor, a boy chum who lived in the next street, came walking along the orchard path. “What are you doin’?”
“Nothin’!” answered Tom. “What you doin’, Ted?”