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Betty, orphaned at the age of six, had been adopted by the kind-hearted Mrs. Wopp. The child found her chief joy in life, outside of Jethro, Nancy and Job, in a flower-bed. A small plot of ground had been allotted her for her own use, and there every spring for the last four years her precious flowers had bloomed and had filled her eyes with brightness and her soul with gladness. Morning-glories and nasturtiums were the surest to bloom. They climbed the strings so gracefully and turned the old weather-beaten fence where they grew into a tapestry of gorgeous dyes. Billy turned the bulky papers over and over as if to gather some hint of their meaning from fold and stiffness. “What is it, Mr. Smith?” he asked wonderingly. Rain dropped her gray mantle behind a tree, and reappeared with her chalice of diamond-dust dew, to touch the fairy chorus to shimmering beauty. The gnomes, their queer masks and hunched shoulders showing grotesquely under their gray garb, joined the fairies’ dance. Wind came floating in as Summer Breeze. Storm was transformed to the Slave of the Sower; while Black Frost was perched high up at the rear, grinning from the top of the mountain..
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So he has come back to her. There is triumph in this thought and some natural vanity, but above and beyond all else a great relief that lifts from her the deadly fear that all night has been consuming her and has robbed her of her rest. Now anxiety is at an end, and joy reigns, born of the knowledge that by his speedy surrender he has proved himself her own indeed, and she herself indispensable to his content.I tried logging in using my phone number and I
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"How tender! how touching!" she says, with a pensive smile, raising her luminous eyes to Geoffrey: whether it is the snail, or the leaf, or the slime, that is tender and touching, nobody knows; and nobody dares ask, lest he shall betray his ignorance. Nolly, I regret to say, gives way to emotion of a frivolous kind, and to cover it blows his nose sonorously. Whereupon Geoffrey, who is super-naturally grave, asks Lady Lilias if she will walk with him as far as the grotto.
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What delightfully busy and secret evenings Betty spent in the kitchen with Mrs. Wopp helping and expostulating! What dismal sighs from Moses who, like the Marchioness, cooled his eye at the keyhole! His sighs penetrated through the said keyhole and almost softened the obdurate Betty; but, alas, his eavesdropping ended only in whetting the edge of his curiosity! What yelps from Jethro when Moses trod on his foot in headlong flight from the door as his mother approached! What copious notes written by Ebenezer Wopp on the whispering and conspiracies in the kitchen! And then again what sweeping up and burning of cardboard, what hunting through old newspapers and magazines, and what clicking of scissors while a small pair of jaws worked simultaneously! What gorgeous hues from the paint-box as Betty mixed her colors and painted innumerable pictures cut from the magazines! Animals, birds, flowers! Gay as color could make them! A veritable garden and zoo turned loose in the kitchen! The last act exhausted the possibilities of the theatre in light effects and sylvan scenery; and the curtain rose on a gorgeous scene. But oh, horror! In the middle of the stage the scene-shifters had left the ugly truck that moved Storm King’s reservoir of ice and snow. When used in previous acts, bed and wheels had been hidden by moss, the tank had been covered by his mantle, and the entire mechanism, moving as he moved, had seemed a part of himself. Now its secret was disclosed and it was ridiculous. AFTER the disaster of the Fair Ellen, Billy promised his mother to bar explosives from his play, a promise made readily, for “Betsey has been giving it to me good an’ plenty for leaving that door open,” he explained to her. Thus the Alaska trade which the boys intended the Fair Ellen to wrest from Seattle, thereby transferring some of her prosperity to California’s stricken seaport, remained with the northern metropolis; and they sought other outlet for their energies. “This froth looks like soapsuds,” he complained..
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