“‘Do I want it?’ he cried starting toward her. ‘Why, Polly Ann, I’ve just been longing for that button. I never wanted anything so much in my life. I was only afraid you wouldn’t give it to me.’ He put his arms around her and they went in to look at the house. When they had gone in, I saw this little button lying on the path almost at my feet, and I picked it up and skipped home to tell Mother and the girls that Stanley was going to marry Polly Ann after all.
“And now, ‘’night, ’night,’ and pleasant dreams.”
EARNING A VIOLIN
“And you don’t like to practice!” Grandma exclaimed in surprise when Bobby told her why he did not like to take violin lessons. “But you’ll have to practice, you know, or you will never learn to play. I knew a boy once, who dearly liked to practice. I think I’ll tell you about him. It was my brother Charlie. Charlie had wanted a violin ever since he was just a little bit of a fellow and had first heard old Mr. Potter play on his violin.
“Mr. Potter was a traveling tailor who went around the country making and mending men’s clothing. He carried his goods from place to place in pack saddles, and he always brought his violin along.
“In the evenings he would play, and we all loved to hear him. He played beautifully. All Charlie and I had ever heard before were things like ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ or ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ There was such a difference between these tunes and what Mr. Potter played that the first time Charlie heard him play—‘Annie Laurie,’ I think it was—he walked up to him and said very solemnly, ‘I like a violin better than a fiddle,’ and everybody laughed.
“Years before, Mr. Potter had had a thriving trade, but when I knew him he did not get much to do because store suits for men had become common. Mother always found some work for him, though, and in his spare time he gave violin lessons.
“He was in our neighborhood several weeks each spring, and one winter Charlie determined to have a violin and be ready to take lessons when he came next time.
“So right away he began to save money for a violin. But there wasn’t much Charlie could do to earn money, and it looked as though he would never get enough for a violin, let alone enough for an instruction book and lessons. But he did get the violin, and this is how it came about.