“’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.”