"But what good will a c'lection of buttons be?" demanded Allee, more puzzled than before. "What can you use 'em for?"
"What can you use any c'lection for?" sarcastically retorted Peace, exasperated at the little sister's stupidity. "What does Henderson Meadows use his c'lection of stamps for? Just to brag about and see how many more kinds he can get than the other boys."
"But—I never heard of such a thing as a c'lection of buttons," persisted Allee, privately worried for fear Peace was going crazy. "No one that I know has got one."
"They will have as soon as I get mine started," the other girl stoutly maintained. "You wait and see."
Allee shook her head doubtfully and slowly reached out her hand for her gorgeous sunset which strongly resembled a rainbow in convulsions.
"You don't seem to like the plan," suggested Peace, more than ever determined to make the venture, just to prove to this skeptical creature that she knew what she was talking about.
"I—don't think—it will work," replied truthful Allee.
"Well, I'll show you. Miss Edith said when she was a girl it was a fad one winter to see who could get the biggest and prettiest string of buttons, and when I was telling Grandma she laughed and said they had the same thing a-going when she was a girl."
"But I don't see any sense to it," protested the younger sister, still unconvinced.
"I never saw a c'lection yet that had any sense to it, when it comes to that," Peace reluctantly admitted. "What sense is there in saving up a lot of dead bugs like Cherry's been doing all summer, or a bunch of horrid, nasty, dirty old pipes, like Len Abbott was so proud of; or even all those queeriosities that Judge Abbott kept in his library and said was worth so much money! I ain't a-going to do it for the sense there is in it, but it'll be awful lonesome for me when you girls go back to school this fall, 'specially as the doctor says I mustn't have a teacher of my own yet, and I can't do any real studying all by myself." Privately, Peace was much pleased with this verdict, but she thought it unnecessary to say so. "That's why I thought it would be a good plan to get something like this started which would help fill up the time while you and Cherry were shut up in school, and Grandma was too busy to pay attention to me."