“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.

“Old riverzh bwoke wight in two there,” said Toddie, “an’ a piece of it’s way up in the air, an’ anuvver piece izh way down in big hole in the shtones. That’sh where I want to go widin’.”

“Listen, Toddy,” said Mrs. Burton.  “We like to take you riding with us at most times, but to-day we prefer to go alone.  You and Budge will stay at home—­we shan’t be gone more than two hours.”

“Wantsh to go a-widin’!” exclaimed Toddie.

“I know you do, dear, but you must wait until some other day,” said the lady.

“But I wantsh to go,” Toddie explained.

“And I don’t want you to, so you can’t,” said Mrs. Burton, in a tone which would reduce any reasonable person to hopelessness.  But Toddie, in spite of manifest astonishment, remarked: 

“Wantsh to go a-widin’.”

“Now the fight is on,” murmured Mr. Burton to himself.  Then he arose hastily from the table, and said: 

“I think I’ll try to catch the earlier train, my dear, as I am coming back so soon.”

Mrs. Burton arose to bid her husband Good-by, and was kissed with more than usual tenderness, and then held at arm’s length, while manly eyes looked into her own with an expression which she found untranslatable—­for two hours at least.  Mrs. Burton saw her husband fairly on his way, and then she returned to the dining-room, led Toddie into the parlor, took him upon her lap, wound her arms tenderly about him, and said: 

“Now, Toddie, dear, listen carefully to what Aunt Alice tells you.  There are some reasons why you boys should not go with us to-day, and Aunt Alice means just what she says when she tells you you can’t go with us.  If you were to ask a hundred times it would not make the slightest bit of difference.  You cannot go, and you must stop thinking about it.”