Teddy's Button by Amy Le Feuvre

Here, reverting to more earthly topics, Nancy held up the cat
arrayed in her sailor hat and jacket.
'Look, this is Jack Tar! Doesn't she make a jolly sailor?'
A gleeful, hearty peal of laughter came from Teddy, and was heard
in the adjoining room by his grandmother with comfort. She called
Mrs. John.
'Hear that, now! Why, he's getting quite himself again; it does him
good to have a child to talk to. She must come again.'
And this Nancy did, and the roses began to come back to Teddy's
cheeks, and then others of his playfellows were allowed to come and see
him.
Certainly no little invalid could have received greater attention
than he did during that time of convalescence. Every day small
offerings were presented at the door by the village children, and very
diverse were the gifts. Sometimes a bunch of wild-flowers, sometimes
birds' eggs, marbles, boxes of chalk, a packet of toffee or barley-sugar, a
currant bun, a tin trumpet, a whistle, a jam tart, a penny pistol, and so
on, till his mother declared she would have to stop taking them in, as
they were getting such an accumulation of them.
'And how is my little fellow-soldier?' asked Mr. Upton, as he came
in one day for his first visit to the little invalid after being downstairs.
‘He’ll soon be out of hospital,' responded Teddy brightly.
'And is he still fighting for his Captain?'
'I think, sir, Ipse has been very good while I've been ill.'
'He has been lying low, has he? If I mistake not, you will have a
brush with him yet before long, so be on the look-out.'
And Teddy found the good rector's words come true. Days came
when he tried his mother's patience much by his fractiousness and
restlessness, and he was more often the vanquished than the conqueror.
Even Nancy one day remonstrated with him.
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