"How time does fly--sometimes!"

Mr. Burton saw something in his wife's face that seemed to call for lover-like treatment; but it was not without a sense of injury that he exclaimed, immediately after, as he drew forth his watch:

"I declare! I would make an affidavit that we hadn't been awake half an hour. Ah! I forgot to wind up my watch last night."

The boys hurried into the parlor.

"I hear 'em trampin' around!" exclaimed Budge, in great excitement.

"There!--the piano's shut! Isn't that _too_ mean! Oh, _I'll_ tell you--here's Uncle Harry's violin."

"Then whatsh _I_ goin' to play on?" asked Toddie, dancing frantically about.

"Wait a minute," said Budge, dropping the violin, and hurrying to the floor above, from which he speedily returned with a comb. A bound volume of the _Portfolio_ lay upon the table, and opening this, Badge tore the tissue paper from one of the etchings and wrapped the comb in it.

"There!" said he, "you fiddle an' I'll blow the comb. Goodness! why _don't_ they come down? Oh, we forgot to put pennies under the plate, and we don't know how many years old to put 'em for."

"An' we ain't got no pennies," said Toddie.

"_I_ know," said Budge, hurrying to a cabinet in a drawer of which his uncle kept the nucleus of a collection of American coinage. "This kind of pennies," Budge continued, "isn't so pretty as our kind, but they're bigger, an' they'll look better on a table-cloth. Now, how old do you think she is?"

"I dunno," said Toddie, going into a reverie of hopeless conjecture.

"She's about as big as you and me put togevver."

"Well," said Budge, "you're four an' I'm six, an' four an' six is ten--I guess ten'll be about the thing."

Mrs. Burton's plate was removed, and the pennies were deposited in a circle. There was some painful counting and recounting, and many disagreements, additions and subtractions. Finally, the pennies were arranged in four rows, two of three each and two of two each, and Budge counted the threes and Toddie verified the twos; and Budge was adding the four sums together, when footsteps were heard descending the stairs.

Budge hastily dropped the surplus coppers upon the four rows, replaced the plate, and seized the comb as Toddie placed the violin against his knee, as he had seen small, itinerant Italians do. A second or two later, as the host and hostess entered the dining-room, there arose a sound which caused Mrs. Burton to clap her fingers to her ears, while her husband exclaimed:

'"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. Then her eye was caught by the fruit on the sideboard, and she read the cards aloud:

"Mrs. Frank Rommery--this is 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. Charlie 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 are sure to be, 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. "Theysh from me an'

Budge, an' we dzust tasted 'em to see if they'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."

Mrs. Burton's thoughtful expression and her husband's frown disappeared together, as they seated themselves at the table. Both boys wriggled rigorously until their aunt raised her plate, and then Budge exclaimed:

"A penny for each year, you know."

"Thirty-one!" exclaimed Mrs. Burton, after counting the heap. "How complimentary!"

"What doesh you do for little boys on your bifeday?" asked Toddie, after breakfast was served. "Mamma does _lots_ of fings."

"Yes," said Budge, "she says she thinks people ought to get their own happy by makin' other people happy. An' mamma knows better than you, you know, 'cause she's been married longest."

Although Mrs. Burton admitted the facts, the inference seemed scarcely natural, and she said so.

"Well--a--a--a--a--_any_how," said Toddie, "mamma always has parties on her bifeday, an' we hazh all the cake we want."

"You shall be happy to-day, then," said Mrs. Burton; "for a few friends will be in to see me this afternoon, and I am going to have a nice little lunch for them, and you shall lunch with us, if you will be very good until then, and keep yourselves clean and neat."

"Aw wight," said Toddie. "Izhn't it most time now?"

"Tod's all stomach," said Budge, with some contempt. "Say, Aunt Alice, I hope you won't forget to have some fruit-cake. That's the kind _we_ like best."

"You'll come home very early, Harry?" asked Mrs. Burton, ignoring her nephew's question.

"By noon, at furthest," said the gentleman. "I only want to see my morning letters, and fill any orders that may be in them."

"What are you coming so early for, Uncle Harry?" asked Budge.

"To take Aunt Alice riding, old boy," said Mr. Burton.

"Oh! just listen, Tod! Won't that be jolly? Uncle Harry's going to take us riding!"

"I said I was going to take your Aunt Alice, Budge," said Mr. Burton.

"I heard you," said Budge, "but that won't trouble us any. She always likes to talk to you better than she does to us. When are we going?"

Mr. Burton asked his wife, in German, whether the Lawrence-Burton assurance was not charmingly natural, and Mrs. Burton answered in the same tongue that it was, but was none the less deserving of rebuke, and that she felt it to be her duty to tone it down in her nephews. Mr.

Burton wished her joy of the attempt, and asked a number of searching questions about success already attained, until Mrs. Burton was glad to see Toddie come out of a brown study and hear him say:

"I fink that placesh where the river is bwoke off izh the nicest placesh."

"What _does_ the child mean?" asked his aunt.

"Don't you know where we went last year, an' you stopped us from seein'

how far we could hang over, Uncle Harry?" said Budge.

"Oh--Passaic Falls!" exclaimed Mr. Burton.

"Yes, that's it," said Budge.