"Well, they were afraid I'd be hurt--only I knew I wouldn't be--anything
to speak of--a couple of fingers, perhaps--"

"Off the left hand," he suggested understandingly.

"Of course,--off the left hand."

"That brakeman on No. 3 has got two off _his_ left hand," was the final
comment.

We retraced our steps; but there was yet another butterfly of my
namesake's. He led us to a by-path that followed the river bank up to
the bridge, running far ahead of us. When we reached him he was seated,
dumb with yearning, before a newly painted sign,

"GO TO BUDD'S FOR AN UP-TO-DATE 25 CT. DINNER."

He was obliged to limp that day, for his stone-bruise was coming on
finely; but he had gone half a mile out of his way to worship at this
wayside shrine. Again he was dreaming. In the days of his opulence he
saw himself going to Budd's. Fortunately for his illusions the price was
now prohibitive. I had been to Budd's myself.

"Have you ever been there?" I asked of the dreamer.

"I've been in his store, in the front part, where the candy is--and if
you go 'round when he's freezing ice cream, he'll give you a whole
ten-cent dish just for turning the freezer; but Pop won't let me stay
out of school to do it, and Budd don't freeze Saturdays. But some day--"
he paused. Then, with seemingly another idea:--

"He's got an awful funny sign up over the counter."

He would not tell me what the sign was, though, He shuffled and talked
of other things. I entered Budd's on the morrow, purposely to read it,
and I knew that my namesake had quailed before it. The sign was in
white, frosted letters, on a blue ground, and it ran:--

TO TRUST IS TO BUST
TO BUST IS HELL
NO TRUST, NO BUST, NO HELL.

Its syllogistic hardness was repellant, but I dare say it preserved a
gorgeous butterfly from utter extinction.

Home again at early twilight, we ate of a cold supper set out for us by
Mrs. Sullivan. And here I reflected that good days often end badly, for
my namesake betrayed extreme dissatisfaction with the food.

"Why don't we have that pudding oftener--with lather on top of it?" was
his first outbreak. And at last he felt obliged to declare bitterly, "We
don't have a thing that's fit to eat!"

"Calvin," said his father, "if I have to whip, it will hurt you worse
than it does me."

Whereupon the complainer was wisely silent, but later I heard him
asserting, between