“Now, I think she ought to come,” said Budge. (Breakfast time was still more than an hour distant.) “Why, the rising-bell hasn’t rung yet!  Let’s ring it!”

The boys fought for possession of the bell; but superior might conquered, and Budge marched up and down the hall, ringing with the enthusiasm and duration peculiar to the amateur.

“Bless me!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton, hastening to complete her toilet.  “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: