One evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room they found her sitting before the fire rocking gently to and fro and looking thoughtfully at something she held in her hand. When they had drawn up their stools and sat down, she handed the object to them and they passed it from one to the other, examining it eagerly.
It was a button—a pearl button of a peculiar shape, fancifully carved. The holes were filled with silk thread, attaching to the button a bit of faded flannel as if it had been forcibly torn from a garment.
“I found that button today,” Grandma began, “when I was looking for something else, in a little box in the bottom of my trunk. I had forgotten I had it. It came off my brother Stanley’s fancy waistcoat, and the way of it was this:
“Stanley had been away at school all year, and when he came home he had some stylish new clothes—among other things a pair of lavender trousers and a waistcoat to match and a ruffled shirt and some gay silk cravats.
“Every Sunday he dressed up as fine as could be, and all the girls were nice to him. But he didn’t pay any attention to any of them except Polly Ann Nesbit, who was the prettiest girl in all the country round about. Some people called Polly Ann’s hair red, but it wasn’t. It was a deep rich auburn, and she had brown eyes and a fair creamy skin. Besides being pretty she was sweet-tempered, though lively and gay.
“Polly Ann had so many beaux that when she was sixteen every one thought she would be married before the year was out, and her father—Polly Ann was his only child—said that he wouldn’t give Polly Ann to any man. He needn’t have worried, for Polly Ann was so hard to please that she was still unwed at twenty when Stanley came home from school. By that time her father was telling every one how much land he meant to give Polly Ann when she married.
“Stanley hadn’t been home very long until he, like all the other boys, was crazy about Polly Ann, and she favored him more than any of the others. Stanley went to see her every week and escorted her home from parties and singings and took her to ride on Sunday afternoons in his new top buggy. Father suspected he would be wanting to get married, and told him he could have the wheat field on what we called the upper place, to put in a winter crop for himself.
“Then one night at a party at Orbison’s Stanley wore his new lavender waistcoat. Polly Ann wagered the other girls that she could have a button off the waistcoat for her button string, and they wagered her she couldn’t.
“That night when Stanley asked Polly Ann if he might see her home she said he could if he would give her a button off his waistcoat. It must have been hard for Stanley, for he knew he could never wear the waistcoat again if he did as she asked and that he couldn’t go with Polly Ann any more if he refused. He had no knife and he wouldn’t borrow one, so he just wrenched a button off and gave it to Polly Ann.
“When the girls went upstairs to put on their wraps, Polly Ann showed the button to them and they had lots of fun about it. The next morning Aggie told Stanley what Polly Ann had done and how every one was laughing at him.
“Stanley was at breakfast. There was no one in the kitchen but Stanley and Aggie and me, and they didn’t pay any attention to me. I remember how red Stanley’s face got when Aggie told him, and his chin, which had a dimple, seemed suddenly to get square like Father’s. I thought to myself that Polly Ann Nesbit had better look out, for, as Father often told us, ‘he who laughs last, laughs best.’ Stanley did get even with Polly Ann, though not in the way we thought he would.
“Before he went to work that morning he wrote her a letter and paid Charlie a quarter for taking it to her. Charlie told me that Polly Ann was in the front yard by herself when he gave her the letter and when she read it she just laughed and laughed, but that she put it in her pocket for safekeeping.
“Stanley was as nice as ever to her when they met, but he didn’t go to see her any more or take her buggy riding on Sunday afternoons. He took Mother or me instead, and I thought it very nice. Stanley went right ahead ploughing up his wheat field just as if nothing had happened, and when he got through with that he began to fix up a little cottage where brother Joe had lived for two years after he was married.
Polly Ann was in the front yard when Charlie gave her the letter
“He built a new kitchen, at the side instead of at the back where most people built their kitchens, so his wife could see the road when she was working, he said. And he added a front porch with railings and a seat at each end and painted the house white and set out rose bushes and honeysuckle vines and began to buy the furniture.
“Of course it caused a great deal of talk, and every one wondered whom Stanley was going to marry. The girls would laugh about Stanley’s house and say they wouldn’t marry a man who wouldn’t let them furnish their own house. And often they would tease Polly Ann, but she would only toss her head and say nothing.
“And all the time Stanley worked away, singing and whistling as happy as could be. When any one questioned him, he would say he meant to keep bachelor’s hall, or that he hadn’t decided what he would do, or that he planned to marry the sweetest girl he knew. Belle and Aggie were wild to know what girl he meant. They tried in every way to find out, but they couldn’t.
“Stanley often talked in his sleep, and they would listen to hear whether he mentioned a girl’s name, but they could never understand what he said. Some one told the girls to tie a string around Stanley’s great toe and when he talked to pull the string gently and he would repeat clearly what he had just said.
“One night Belle and Aggie did this, but instead of a string they used a piece of red yarn. When they were pulling it, it snapped in two, and Stanley woke up and found the yarn on his toe and jumped out of bed and chased the girls squealing and giggling into their room, and Father came out to see what was the matter.
“But finally the house was done, even to the last shining pan, and Mother had given Stanley so many quilts and blankets and things that Charlie grumbled and said there would be nothing left for the rest of us.
“One afternoon I was up at the cottage with Stanley planting some of Mother’s wonderful yellow chrysanthemums by the garden fence. Stanley was building a lattice at the end of the porch for a climbing rose which he had only just set out, when the front gate clicked and there, coming up the path, was Polly Ann Nesbit. Her cheeks were rosy and she was laughing.
“‘I’ve brought it myself, Stanley,’ she cried gaily. ‘You said in your letter to send you the button when I was ready to marry you, but I’ve brought it instead. Do you—do you still want it?’ and she held out this little button, the very one Stanley had pulled off his lavender waistcoat to please her.
“I looked at Stanley, so straight and tall and handsome though he was in his everyday clothes, to see what he would do.
“‘Do I want it?’ he cried starting toward her. ‘Why, Polly Ann, I’ve just been longing for that button. I never wanted anything so much in my life. I was only afraid you wouldn’t give it to me.’ He put his arms around her and they went in to look at the house. When they had gone in, I saw this little button lying on the path almost at my feet, and I picked it up and skipped home to tell Mother and the girls that Stanley was going to marry Polly Ann after all.
“And now, ‘’night, ’night,’ and pleasant dreams.”