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Perhaps the fact that Mannel came from a home where Russian was the language in use and that he knew little English, accounted for his abnormal seriousness during school hours. He could not be absolutely sure what was being said or what might be done to him. Perhaps some cruel elder brother, before Mannel had even started his education, had explained to him in voluble Russian that dreadful pains and penalties were likely to follow the slightest deviation from the paths of virtue. Certain it is that he kept a close watch on the teacher, and that none of her slightest movements escaped him. Though his general appearance might cause mirth in others, he himself seldom smiled. Day by day he sat in his little front seat grasping slate and pencil in chubby hands, gazing earnestly at the sums on the blackboard as he copied them down. Afterward he worked these with fitting solemnity. To him they appeared to be of the greatest difficulty and of national importance. Sometimes he wrote endless rows of letters on his slate. Sometimes he made nondescript figures out of plasticine or drew patterns on his slate or counted beads. At other times, grievous to relate, when he felt sure the teacher was otherwise engaged and could not possibly see him, he drew fierce triangular cats with four or perhaps five stiff, geometrical legs and rampant tails. “Don’t care a doughnut,” answered Moses defiantly, “I’d ruther turn the washin’ machine any day than stand like a goose spellin’ words any arss can spell.” If he had been older he would have said he had “the blues.” Yet probably he would not have known that his mental—and physical—condition was a natural result of the long strain of previous weeks. All the children felt it. That morning the cousins, Clarence and Harry, who loved each other dearly, had come to blows in the Sunday School room before the teachers arrived, over the question of which one of them should marry Miss Edith. Clarence received a bloody scratch the full length of his palm from Harry’s Band of Mercy pin; while the careful parting disappeared from his own hair, and a red splotch marred the whiteness of his wide collar. No one can tell what further calamity might have happened had not the Twins opportunely arrived and questioned of the quarrel..
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🌟 Join the Winning Team at IPL Win online!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
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Conrad
“The fleetin’ of youth is most sartin,” answered his wife, coining this epigram on the shortness of life’s spring-time, and sighing as she spoke. The good lady herself was looking through a stereoscope at some views and finding one of Niagara Falls she endeavored to cheer her despondent husband. “Oh, Lord, she’s orl I got,” he wailed. He hinted that there would be no more light in him, than in Job’s blind eye, should Betty be lost to him. Here she produced a picture of a nest of young robins, their beaks wide open for a tempting morsel hanging from the bill of father robin. CHAPTER XI GOOD-NIGHT IN THE FO’CASTLE.
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