फुटबॉल आदमी

फुटबॉल आदमी Earn money by referring friends With a supreme effort he straightened his arms just as the board reached the level of the sill, pushed it forward with all his might; and—it caught! Caught by an inch or less!,Billy at work or at play was so absorbed that it was hard for him to measure time; and he had a queer notion that it was some other intelligence beside his own will that reminded him, often too late, of duties waiting. This he named Betsey; and among the children Betsey came to stand for Billy’s conscience.,“Will you please play it fer us then, it is so touchin’. You will find the music on the organ.”,“Don’t Betty look jist too sweet,” she murmured when she had finally located the child, “Her hair looks as ef she had got tangled up in the milky way an’ there was nothin’ on it but star-dust.”,She took the child in her comforting arms. “Don’t cry, little one! We shall find her, never fear.”，“Take May Nell into the garden with you, Billy,” Mrs. Bennett said; “I shall be busy with the Saturday work, and she will be happier in the sunshine. And don’t speak of the earthquake,” she warned him aside; “she must forget that as fast as possible.”，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.，“Now Moses,” announced his mother, “Jist for a change an’ rest like, turn this here separator.”After supper, Betty was sought diligently, but without success. At last Moses discovered her underneath the huge red tablecloth that covered the dining-room table. She was sound asleep on the floor with Jethro in her arms and his head on her bosom. Her face was smeared with tear-stains.

Several others were summoned and returned with remarkable reports. At last two high-pitched little voices called in concert down the[160] stair: “The Royal Seeress will rend the veil of futurity for William Bennett.”,“Soapsuds is Moses’ strong weakness,” commented Mrs. Wopp, laughing till her fat shoulders quaked perilously.,Mrs. Wopp’s eagle eye, again rested on the lowering face of her offspring.,“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.,Moses returned to work with jelly and soot mingling in a purple streak on cheek and chin.,“This froth looks like soapsuds,” he complained.,“Obedience, thy name is cats,” Billy preached solemnly.,Dim religious lights from stained glass windows shone through the church and falling on the boy chilled him to the marrow.,“She won’t do it; she said so before. She wants to be Alan-bane.”,He swung his book-strap in greeting to his mother while rolling more slowly up the rose-bordered path to the veranda. He thought his mother’s face looked tired; but the smile there welcomed him warmly, and he forgot the tired look with her first words.,In a few days the sight of his wife wrapped in a shawl the color of an unripe cucumber had a rejuvenating influence upon Ebenezer Wopp. He did not say much, being a man of few words, but his sentiments were inscribed in cramped illegible writing on a slip of paper to be handed down to posterity.,“Don’t Job look jist like Mariar Mifsud goin’ to meetin’,” gurgled Betty..