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The brass-buttoned official made no reply, save to purse his lips and utter another low whistle; but he gave Margot and Joe a critical survey and reflected that of all the passengers he had ever carried these were the most unique.
"No, you are not," said Carter with a certain bitterness of tone. "People do all kinds of queer things for a living, and I am not particular myself, but I would think twice before taking your billet." "What? What do you in-si-nu-ate. My billet? You ain't fit for it, you yacht-swabbing brass-buttoned imposter." "What's this? Any of our boats back?" asked Lingard from the poop.
That the children preferred the excitement of the police station, and the distinction of a trip in charge of a brass-buttoned guardian, to the Ludlow Street flat is easy enough to understand. A more unlovely existence than that in one of these tenements it would be hard to imagine.
It was the way he had carried himself. Those years in New York, prior to the war, had not been wasted. The brass-buttoned fools!
They were received on the "Harriet Lane," and Commodore Porter had made great preparations for the meeting. The crews of all the vessels were dressed in snow-white mustering-suits, and the officers in brass-buttoned blue coats and white trousers. The decks were scrubbed, and all traces of the fight cleared away.
When they reached the saloon a number of jackbooted, brass-buttoned, gentlemen of various ages were presented in turn to Henrietta who forgot all their names the moment after they were introduced and was quite delighted when she was conducted to her room and left alone with Clementina. She had scarce time to change her travelling dress when supper was announced.
Some father in those side ranks lawlessly cried out to his red-capped boy as the passing lad brushed close against him, "Good-by, my son!" and as the son gave him only a sidelong glance he seized and shook the sabre arm, and all that long, bristling lane of bayonets went out of plumb, out of shape and order, and a thousand brass-buttoned throats shouted good-by and hurrah.
So he took off the policeman's cap and brass-buttoned coat and put them on Miss Scrapple, while the lady's feathered and ribboned hat he placed jauntily upon the policeman's head.
"Proud, stuck-up things," thought Skipper. It was clear that none of this work was for him. Early on the first morning of his service men in brass-buttoned blue coats came to the stable to feed and rub down the horses. Skipper's man had two names. One was Officer Martin; at least that was the one to which he answered when the man with the cap called the roll before they rode out for duty.
It became unpleasant after a while, however, and a policeman, inquiring into the matter, marched the two dirty, weary little protestants off to a station near by, a march nearly as difficult and bloody as Sherman's memorable 'march to the sea'; for the children associated nothing so pleasant as supper and bed with a blue-coated, brass-buttoned person, and resisted his well-meant advances with might and main, and tooth and nail.
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