"Doctor, doctor, come here right away! Don't wait a single minute."
The doctor obeyed the summons, and Jack was consoling himself with the thought that the monkey wrench, which belonged to the stable, could not tell tales about him, and the hen, if still alive, could not talk English, when the doctor's well-known voice struck terror to his soul by exclaiming loudly:
"Jack, come here!"
Jack went into the house, and was confronted by the father of the Pinkshaw twins, who had brought a buttonless coat and a pair of trousers as evidence of the truth of his boy's statement that Jack had fought with him, knocked him down, and cut the buttons from his clothes out of simple malice. (It may be remarked, in passing, that the Pinkshaw twin had shrewdly determined that Jack would rather be unjustly punished on such a charge than confess the truth.)
"You needn't deny it," said Mr. Pinkshaw; "my boys always tell the truth." (N. B. Everybody's boys do.) "I'll warrant you have the buttons in your pocket now, saving them up until next marble time, when you'll play them away."
"Jack," said the doctor, "empty your pockets."
Jack had not the strength to resist or devise any way of reducing, without exposure, the protrusion of that one of his pockets which held the buttons. How he wished that the lately despised shirt buttons, so small, so insignificant, had constituted the whole body of the previous evening's currency, instead of its being inflated by the huge papier-mache sailor buttons from the Pinkshaw twin's jacket.
The doctor came rudely to his assistance, however, and soon the floor was covered with buttons, to the identity of most of which Mr. Pinkshaw could swear.
"My boy says Jack stole his knife, too," said Mr. Pinkshaw.
"I didn't!" vehemently protested Jack, and a close search failed to prove that Jack spoke untruly. Just then the Wittingham servant came to the door, holding aloft in one hand a stocking and in the other a dirty pack of cards and the knife, exclaiming: