The Oz Series
Chapter 91
Part of the The Road to Oz: The Shaggy Man's Journey to Ozma's Birthday arc.
What happens
The seventh road proves good, curving through green meadows and fields of daisies and buttercups past groups of shady trees, with no houses and no living creatures for some distance. Dorothy fears they are getting far from the farm-house but reasons that returning to where the roads met would not help, since another road might lead just as far from home. She keeps beside the shaggy man, who whistles cheerful tunes, until a turn in the road reveals a big chestnut tree shading the highway, beneath which sits a little boy in sailor clothes digging a hole in the earth with a bit of wood; the hole is already big enough to drop a football into. The party halts before the boy, who keeps digging soberly and persistently.
When questioned, the round-faced, blue-eyed boy identifies himself only as Button-Bright, insisting that is his real name and explaining that his papa said he was as bright as a button so his mama called him Button-Bright; he does not know his papa's name beyond 'Papa,' where he lives, how he came there, or where he came from. The shaggy man decides they will call him Button-Bright as his mama does. Dorothy concludes the boy is lost. To nearly every question the boy answers 'Don't know,' including what he will do after he can no longer dig and what will become of him; when Dorothy admits she cannot say what will become of herself either, the shaggy man observes that no one knows everything.
Dorothy notes the boy seems two or three years younger than herself and is prettily dressed, as if someone loves him dearly, and wonders how he came to this lonely road. Near him lie a sailor hat with a gilt anchor on the band, and his sailor trousers and blouse collar bear gold anchors. Questioned about the sea, Button-Bright answers confusingly, saying there is a well in the back yard but not knowing whether he has been on a ship or why he wears sailor clothes. The shaggy man says it is useless to question Button-Bright but that someone ought to care for him, so he should come along. Toto, excited by the boy's hole and perhaps thinking a wild animal is inside, barks and jumps in to dig with his paws, spattering earth on the boy until Dorothy pulls him out and brushes off Button-Bright's clothes and scolds Toto. The shaggy man urges them to start on, explaining that every road leads somewhere and that traveling long enough will bring them to some place in the end, which Dorothy accepts as reasonable.