Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

"Mother, make Trouble stop!"

"What is he doing now, Janet?" asked Mrs. Martin, looking up from her sewing and across the table to where her three children were playing a button game.

"Oh, he's doing everything!" said Teddy, shaking a finger at his funny little brother, who was smiling and holding something in his tightly closed fist. "He's got some of my buttons, and he--"

"Yes, and he knocked a lot of my buttons down on the floor," added Janet. "And he--"

"I must have all de wed buttons!" interrupted Trouble himself. "Wed buttons all mine-I goin' to put 'em on a stwing!" and the little boy, whose name was William, but who was more often called "Trouble," made a grab for another red button which he saw in a pile in front of his sister Janet.

"Don't take that!" cried Janet. "Ma-I mean Mother-please make him stop!" and she tried to push Trouble's hand away.

"Wed buttons all mine!" cried Trouble, just a trace of tears coming into his eyes.

"No, Trouble," said Ted, more gently. "Let sister have the red buttons. We're playing a game with them. I'll let you take all the white buttons!"

"I want wed buttons!" wailed Trouble, and as he still tried to get a handful of them from Janet, and as Janet was doing her best to stop William from doing this, there was a little scramble at the table. Trouble's hand slipped, the buttons slid across the smooth oak boards and fell with a clatter to the floor.

"There! Now look what you did, Trouble Martin!" cried Janet, as she leaned back in her chair. "All the nice buttons are on the floor!"

Trouble seemed much surprised by what he had done. He opened his fat little fist, and out rolled more buttons, some of which rattled to the floor.

"Oh, Mother, he's spoiling all our game!" said Janet. "Please make him stop!"

"I'll pick up the buttons," said Teddy, with a sigh. "I guess this is about fifty times I've done it to-night."

"Oh, hardly as many as that, I think," said his mother, with a smile, as she thrust her needle into the cloth she was sewing. "You must not exaggerate, Teddy."

"What's zaggerate, Mother?" asked Janet. "Is that a new game you can play with buttons?"

"No, dear," answered Mrs. Martin, as she laid aside her sewing and looked at the clock. "To exaggerate means to tell what isn't exactly so so as to make anything seem bigger than it is. Now I don't really believe you have picked the buttons off the floor more than five times to-night, have you, Teddy?" she asked.

"Well, maybe it was-maybe it was-six!" replied the curly-headed little lad.

"And you said fifty!" laughed his mother. "That's exaggeration-making a thing too big, Teddy, my boy!"

"Mrs. Henderson that lives across the street is zaggerated, isn't she, Mother?" asked Janet, as Teddy was busy picking up the buttons Trouble had knocked to the floor.

"Mrs. Henderson exaggerated? Why, Jan, what do you mean?" asked Mrs. Martin.

"I mean she's awful big-fat, you know," explained the little girl. "She's zaggerated all right, isn't she?"

"Oh, it doesn't mean that at all!" said Mrs. Martin, trying not to laugh. "And you mustn't say 'awful' when you mean only 'very much,' Janet. That's exaggeration, too. But, Trouble, I think it's time for you to go to bed. I'll take him upstairs," she said to the two older children, "and then you can play your game a little longer without any one to bother you. Come, Trouble, dear!"

"Ho! Don't want to go to bed! I want wed buttons!" and the little boy tried to reach over the table to where Ted had placed a pile of buttons of different colors.

"Ho, William! Come with mother," said Mrs. Martin quietly. When she used any of the children's real names-such as William, Theodore or Janet, instead of Trouble, Ted or Jan, the little folks knew Mrs. Martin was in earnest and that it was useless to beg further. Trouble heard his right name spoken and he gave a long sigh. Bedtime had come after a long, happy day.

"Could I have one more wed button?" he asked wistfully.

"No more," answered his mother.

"All wite. Den I go to bed!"

He slipped down from his chair, as Ted began putting the buttons from his mother's mending bag into two piles, so that he and Janet might go on with the game.

"Give sister a kiss!" begged Janet of Trouble.

He held back a moment, as if he had not quite forgiven her for not letting him have all the fun he wanted, and then he held up his chubby face.

"That's a good boy!" said Janet as she kissed him. "I'll let you have a lot of red buttons in the morning."

"Night-night!" called Trouble to Ted, as the older boy began counting out the buttons.

"Night-night," echoed Ted, as he wiggled his fingers in a funny fashion at Trouble.

As Mrs. Martin took William up to bed, Ted and Janet started their game over again. It was a simple little game. They spread out on the table all the buttons from mother's bag. Then they divided them into two piles, each taking one.

Janet would then take a button from her pile and hold it in her hand with her fingers closed over it so Teddy could not see it.

"Guess what color it is!" Jan would say to Ted.

"Black," he might answer, or perhaps he would say red, blue, or white-whatever he thought it might be. If he guessed the right color Janet had to give Ted five buttons of the color he had guessed. If he said the wrong color he had to give Janet seven buttons of any color she wanted.

If Ted guessed right, then it was his turn to take a button and make Janet guess the color of it. But if he guessed wrong it was his sister's turn again. And so they played the game, taking turns this way, until they were tired, or until one of them had all the buttons on the table.

It was this game they had been playing when Trouble, or Baby William, made the trouble by wanting all the "wed" buttons.

They played the little game for some time, having lots of fun, and Ted had just taken a number of buttons from Jan when their mother came softly down the stairs.

"Is Trouble asleep?" asked Janet.

"Yes. And it will soon be time for you two Curlytops to go upstairs too," said Mrs. Martin, as she took up her sewing again. "Even if it is vacation time, I can't have my Curlytops staying up too late."

One needed to take only one look at Ted and Janet Martin to know why they were called "Curlytops." It was because their heads were covered with pretty tight little curls of a golden color.

"We'll play three more times," said Ted. "I'll have all Jan's buttons by then."

"It's my turn to win, now!" laughed his sister.