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It had stopped raining, but was still cloudy. This was the hour when Billy usually wheeled long miles by himself, dreaming dreams no one but a boy knows how to dream. Nothing short of a downpour ever hindered him; thus mother and sister knew it was genuine self-sacrifice that kept him beside the little girl through the long afternoon. “I don’t know.” There was a strange weight in his left side, like lead. He felt as if the whole world was against him; and the future looked dark and terrible. Three days ago life had reached out, a white shining road to success. Only three days! He looked north to where clouds were shutting down over the Mountain, gray to-day, not blue. The Mountain, every one called it, for it closed the valley and towered, a sentinel, far above all other mountains in view. Billy thought that stood for him; he was to be chained to this narrow valley all his life; struggle as he might he should never be free..
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The Wopp parlor was seldom entered, except on very special occasions or when Mrs. Wopp with formality and no undue haste dusted the furniture. The room had an air of solemnity and gloom, absent in the cheerful dining-room where the family usually sat. A homemade rag carpet covered the floor. Six slippery, horsehair chairs, one of them a rocker, and a horsehair couch, which did not invite confidence, were ranged stiffly around the sides of the room. In one corner was an ancient organ, wheezy and querulous with neglect, and in another stood a lofty what-not, on whose numerous shelves were deposited the family treasures. Here, was a woolly lamb at one time beloved of Moses; there his tin savings bank. Stiffly upright stood Betty’s wax doll Hannah, seldom played with and then only for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wopp was represented by a few shell boxes and a match box of china flanked by a sleek china cat.I tried logging in using my phone number and I
was supposed to get a verification code text,but didn't
get it. I clicked resend a couple time, tried the "call
me instead" option twice but didn't get a call
either. the trouble shooting had no info on if the call
me instead fails.There was
“Oh no Betty,” Moses tones were of an elder-brotherly authority, “yer li’l han’s aint meant fer sich servitood. I’d not stan’ by an’ see you do that.” With all his teasing at times, Moses adored his little foster-sister. He idealized her, and as Mrs. Wopp had often remarked, whenever Betty left his presence he saw her ascend into heaven in a “Whirlwin’ of fire, an’ go-cart of flame.”
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Conrad
He sprang up, caught her hand, and raced with her down the rocky steep, calling wildly to the men in the wagon as he ran. Bouncer, no longer watched, vented his pent-up excitement in noisy yelps; and above the din Billy heard loud angry words in a foreign tongue that he knew were execrations, commands to return. “I hope when you are growed up, my dear, you will never dance them waltzes an’ two-steps. The good Lord carnt love them as does sich things.” So close was the affiliation between Betty and Moses that exactly three-quarters of an hour after her departure with Miss Gordon for Calgary the impetuous youth was at the rancher’s home trying to inveigle him into a conspiracy to follow the holiday-makers to that city of dazzling attractions. He knew it was he and his friends who were never denied “the run of the house,” that brought in most of the gray film that settled so quickly on the dark floors; it was not fair to leave this back-aching task to his mother. He hustled out the rugs, found dusting cloth, wax, and rubber, and set vigorously at it, working so fast that he was nearly finished when she returned to the room..
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