“Boys!  Boys!  What are you doing?” cried Mrs. Bunker.

“Hello, Mother!” cried Russ.  “She shucks dandy.  All the buttons are coming off, just the way Tom made the kernels of corn come off the cobs for the chickens!  Look!” and he pointed to the buttons dropping from the tin spout into Laddie’s hat.

“Oh, my doll!  My nice doll!” cried Rose.  “She’ll be spoiled now.  She won’t have any buttons left!  Oh, I—­I’m mad at you!” and she cried again and stamped first one foot and then the other at Laddie and Russ.

“Oh, you mustn’t do that,” said Mrs. Bunker gently.

“I don’t care!” pouted Rose, half tearfully.  “They ought not to shuck all the buttons off my doll!”

“Are you doing that, Russ?” asked his mother.

“Yes’m.  But Rose said we could, and then, after she let us take her doll, she wanted it back, and we can’t get her out till she goes through the shucker and all her buttons come off.  Then she’ll pop out the other spout like an ear of corn.”

“Here she comes!” shouted Laddie.  “All the buttons are off now!  But, gee! you can sew more on, Rose.  And here’s your doll!”

As he spoke the doll dropped from a tin spout on the other side of the machine, at the place where the shelled cobs dropped out.  And there wasn’t a single yellow shoe button left on the doll.

“Oh—­oh, dear!” sobbed Rose.  “She’s all spoiled!”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Bunker.  “We can sew the buttons on again.  But you boys shouldn’t have done it,” she told Russ and Laddie.  “What made you?”

“Well, we wanted to shuck something,” said Russ, who was beginning to feel a little sorry for what he had done, “Tom told us not to shuck any kernels off the corn, ’cause he’d fed the chickens enough.  And he said we mustn’t put our hands or any sticks in the machine.  But we wanted to shuck something.”

“And the yellow shoe buttons on Rose’s doll looked just like corn,” added Laddie.

Mrs. Bunker wanted to laugh, but she did not even smile.  Rose felt too bad.

“There’s a wheel inside this machine, Tom told us,” said Russ, “and it’s got a lot of sharp points on it.  And when it goes around and the ears of corn get down inside, the points on the wheel knock and pull all the kernels off.

“We didn’t durst take any ears of corn, so we took Rose’s doll and we put her through the sheller.  Rose said we might.  And all her buttons came off just like kernels.”

“So I see,” said Mrs. Bunker.  “Well, don’t do it again.”

“We won’t,” promised Laddie.  “Here’s your doll, Rose,” he added, as he picked it up off the floor.  Every button had been pulled off in the machine.

“Oh, dear!” sighed his sister.  “She’s spoiled!”

“Oh, no.  I’ll help you make her look like a messenger again, Rose,” said her mother “But you boys had better keep away from the corn-shelling machine.  You might be hurt.”