f shady trees. There were no houses of any sort to be
seen, and for some distance they met with no living creature at all.

Dorothy began to fear they were getting a good way from the farm-house,
since here everything was strange to her; but it would do no good at
all to go back where the other roads all met, because the next one they
chose might lead her just as far from home.

She kept on beside the shaggy man, who whistled cheerful tunes to
beguile the journey, until by and by they followed a turn in the road
and saw before them a big chestnut tree making a shady spot over the
highway. In the shade sat a little boy dressed in sailor clothes, who
was digging a hole in the earth with a bit of wood. He must have been
digging some time, because the hole was already big enough to drop a
football into.

Dorothy and Toto and the shaggy man came to a halt before the little
boy, who kept on digging in a sober and persistent fashion.

"Who are you?" asked the girl.

He looked up at her calmly. His face was round and chubby and his eyes
were big, blue and earnest.

"I'm Button-Bright," said he.

"But what's your real name?" she inquired.

"Button-Bright."

"That isn't a really-truly name!" she exclaimed.

"Isn't it?" he asked, still digging.

"'Course not. It's just a--a thing to call you by. You must have a
name."

"Must I?"

"To be sure. What does your mama call you?"

He paused in his digging and tried to think.

"Papa always said I was bright as a button; so mama always called me
Button-Bright," he said.

"What is your papa's name?"

"Just Papa."

"What else?"

"Don't know."

"Never mind," said the shaggy man, smiling. "We'll call the boy
Button-Bright, as his mama does. That name is as good as any, and
better than some."

Dorothy watched the boy dig.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

"Don't know," was the reply.

"How did you come here?"

"Don't know," he said again.

"Don't you know where you came from?"

"No," said he.

"Why, he must be lost," she said to the shaggy man. She turned to the
boy once more.

"What are you going to do?" she inquired.

"Dig," said he.

"But you can't dig forever; and what are you going to do then?" she
persisted.

"Don't know," said the boy.

"But you MUST know SOMETHING," declared Dorothy, getting provoked.

"Must I?" he asked, looking up in surprise.

"Of course you must."

"What must I know?"

"What's going to become of you,