I have never seen children who so clearly as the young Buttons showed that it did not matter in the least whose children they were, any more than it matters which particular couple of rabbits own the young ones nibbling on the lawn. They were just the young Buttons. If their parents had happened to be the Duttons, or the Scruttons, or the Muttons, it would have suited them quite as well—so long as cook didn’t leave. That really would have mattered after she had got into their ways.
I have known the Button family now for some years, and never have I heard or seen them do anything that could not have been equally well said or done in a different way. “It will do as well as any other” is a favourite saying with all of them. Once, when the Buttons were away, their life’s history shaped itself in my thoughts, falling more or less into rhyme because they are so monotonous. There had been a new baby lately, and the butcher’s cart was at the door again:
Archibald Button carved the mutton
Upon a Sunday morning,
His family beside him see!
The dining-room adorning.
The pudding’s placed before his wife,
Who shares his uneventful life.
He chose her on the oddest ground,
Because her views were all so sound.