THE BOY GLARED AT HIM. "YOU LET MY CLOTHES ALONE!" SAID HE.
All the boys began to hoot and laugh—none of them sympathized with him in his moments of superiority, and his scornful air failed to impress them as of old.
The Button Boy choked by anger and mortification could not reply. But after a moment, "All right for you; I'll be even with you," he said, with a nod to the chief laugher, and went away.
It was some time before he had his chance, and during that time things went from bad to worse with his conspicuous dress, forcing him to be unostentatious, exact—for his goings and comings could be seen for a mile—even retiring. He found now that he began to think of some acts and some speeches of his, in the time when he was not a Button Boy, with as much mortification as the buttons often gave him; and he often checked himself when half-way into some piece of conceited folly. Yet he never forgot that he owed the Back "one," nor that it was he who had given him the worst smart of this miserable period.
At last an event occurred in the family; the Uncle arrived unexpectedly and stated his intention of spending the night. "That is," he said, "if you will give me something better for my supper than a lot of quotations and rules of grammar. I can't eat them, you know."
The family thought this a very odd speech and a very grumpy old gentleman—but they didn't tell him so. He put on his spectacles and looked at the Button Boy very attentively, but the Boy didn't mind; he was too conscious of fulfilling faithfully for six months his part of the contract, and, beside, he stood before the designer of the Buttons.
But when he took the glasses off and said, "Well, you must be pretty fond of money. I don't think double the sum could hire me to make such a show of myself," the Boy minded it exceedingly. He sat down for half an hour and considered whether he wasn't doing a sort of mean thing after all, and he became exceedingly miserable in the conclusion that he was not at all the noble pattern of a boy he used to think he was.
In the morning the Uncle declared his intention of taking a walk and invited his nephew to go with him. Very sure that the peculiar disposition of the old gentleman was capable of bringing him into plenty of unpleasant situations before they reached home again, the Boy found himself almost indifferent to them. A feeling had been growing on him that anything short of meanness or wrongdoing was not worth being mortified about; he felt calm even at a public exhibition of the buttons, he was so disturbed by the discovery of the unworthy motive which had supported him in making a show of himself.
But the Uncle made himself such delightful company on their walk—they left the town—that at last he forgot himself, forgot himself until they saw before them a boy running. He knew him; it was the Back. He stumbled, pitched, fell, picked himself up slowly, limped painfully to the roadside and sat down there holding on to his ankle. The Boy and the Uncle soon came up.
"Humph; sprained your ankle," said the Uncle.