The Ball of Fire by George Randolph Chester

The Reverend Smith Boyd, rector of the richest church in the world, dropped his last collar button on the floor, and looked distinctly annoyed. The collar button rolled under his mahogany highboy, and concealed itself carefully behind one of the legs. The Reverend Smith Boyd, there being none to see, laid aside his high dignity, and got down on his knees, though not for any clerical purpose. With his suspenders hanging down his back, he sprawled his long arms under the highboy in all directions, while his face grew red; and the little collar button, snuggled carefully out of sight behind the furthest leg, just shone and shone. The rector, the ticking of whose dressing-room clock admonished him that the precious moments were passing never to return again, twisted his neck, and bent his head sidewise, and inserted it under the highboy, one ear scraping the rug and the other the bottom of the lowest drawer. No collar button.

He withdrew his neck, and twisted his head in the opposite direction, and inserted his head again under the highboy, so that the ear which had scraped the carpet now scraped the bottom of the drawer, whereat the little collar button shone so brightly that the rector's bulging eye caught the glint of it. His hand swung round, at the end of a long arm, and captured it before it could hide any further, then the young rector withdrew his throbbing head and started to raise up, and bumped the back of his head with a crack on the bottom of an open drawer, near enough to the top to give him a good long sweep for momentum. This mishap being just one degree beyond the point to which the Reverend Smith Boyd had been consecrated, he ejaculated as follows: -