We enjoyed occasional precious lulls when Mrs. Button had a baby or the children were down with some disease. Even then there were always a few who had recovered first or who had not yet developed it; and as the animals did not get infectious diseases, and their confinements in no way interfered with their usual routine, the “Corrawarraing” and “Cockadoodling” and “Bowing” went on all the year round. It never took Mrs. Button more than a fortnight to have a baby, and during that time the monthly nurse sang almost as loudly in the garden as Mrs. Button used to do in the drawing-room, so, altogether, the lulls did not amount to very much. We always stayed at home during the Buttons’ summer holiday for the pleasure of being without them; besides which, we got an extra month’s peace by going away ourselves as soon as they came back. I never could see any point in the Button family; they seemed to serve no useful end. They fed, and moved about, and multiplied exceedingly, yet never ate each other up, nor burrowed, nor became destructive in their neighbours’ gardens. But they were neither grateful to the eye nor could they be used for sport or for the table. Mr. Button went every day to some mysterious place of business, where persons gave him good money to do for them what they could equally well have done for themselves; it was probably dull work, and Mr. Button did not mind doing it. It suited both parties that the work should go on, because the money they gave him made it possible for him to go on being Mr. Button, which was what he liked. Mrs. Button also liked him to go on being what he was, and they were so contented that they continued to make more and more young Buttons, just because it seemed a pity not to. I am quite certain that was the only reason that moved them to such an important step. I have never seen children who so clearly as the young Buttons showed that it did not matter in the least whose children they were, any more than it matters which particular couple of rabbits own the young ones nibbling on the lawn. They were just the young Buttons. If their parents had happened to be the Duttons, or the Scruttons, or the Muttons, it would have suited them quite as well--so long as cook didn’t leave. That really would have mattered after she had got into their ways. I have known the Button family now for some years, and never have I heard or seen them do anything that could not have been equally well said or done in a different way. “It will do as well as any other” is a favourite saying with all of them. Once, when the Buttons were away, their life’s history shaped itself in my thoughts, falling more or less into rhyme because they are so monotonous. There had been a new baby lately, and the butcher’s cart was at the door again: _Archibald Button carved the mutton Upon a Sunday morning, His family beside him see! The dining-room adorning._