appy faces they had! I wonder why it all frightened and distressed
me so.

In a moment my friend came out with Mrs. Dunkelberg, who kissed me, and
asked me to tell how I happened to be there.

"I just thought I would come," I said as I twisted a button on my coat,
and would say no more to her.

"Mr. Wright, you're going to take him home, are you?" Mrs. Dunkelberg
asked.

"Yes. I'll start off with him in an hour or so," said my friend. "I am
interested in this boy and I want to see his aunt and uncle."

"Let him stay here with us until you're ready to go."

"I don't want to stay here," I said, seizing my friend's hand.

"Well, Sally, you go down to the office and stay with Bart until they
go."

"You'd like that wouldn't you?" the man asked of me.

"I don't know," I said.

"That means yes," said the man.

Sally and another little girl came with us and passing a store I held
back to look at many beautiful things in a big window.

"Is there anything you'd like there, Bart?" the man asked.

"I wisht I had a pair o' them shiny shoes with buttons on," I answered
in a low, confidential tone, afraid to express, openly, a wish so
extravagant.

"Come right in," he said, and I remember that when we entered the store
I could hear my heart beating.

He bought a pair of shoes for me and I would have them on at once, and
that made it necessary for him to buy a pair of socks also. After the
shoes were buttoned on my feet I saw little of Sally Dunkelberg or the
other people of the village, my eyes being on my feet most of the time.

The man took us into his office and told us to sit down until he could
write a letter.

I remember how, as he wrote, I stood by his chair and examined the
glazed brown buttons on his coat and bit one of them to see how hard it
was, while Sally was feeling his gray hair and necktie. He scratched
along with his quill pen as if wholly unaware of our presence.

Soon a horse and buggy came for us and I briefly answered Sally's
good-by before the man drove away with me. I remember telling him as we
went on over the rough road, between fields of ripened grain, of my
watermelon and my dog and my little pet hen.

I shall not try to describe that home coming. We found Aunt Deel in the
road five miles from home. She had been calling and traveling from house
to house most of the night, and I have never forgotten her joy at seeing
me and her tender greeting. She got into the buggy and rode home wit