Casinonomini

Casinonomini online electronics CHAPTER XIV.—BETTY AMONG THE FLOWERS,“I like ‘Ladybird,’ but not ‘bully,’” the little girl returned shyly.,“Gosh!” he exclaimed, as Isobel closed on the last startlingly unexpected note, “that’s where some feller planks his strawr hat on a beauty butterfly!”,CHAPTER XI.—JONAH AND THE WHALE.,“Oh, Miss Gordon, here’s my name,” announced Betty, excitedly, pointing to a central part of the quilt. “An’ here’s yours right clost to it.”，Nell Gordon’s eyes were wet with something else than mirth when Betty entered the house later with her pet in her arms. She had heard of the assault upon the innocent Moses and Jethro and resolved to assist mightily in the smiting of the Philistines. She also held a private consultation with her purse and decided to send off at once to a popular mail-order house for a pair of trousers for Moses of a distinctly different cut from those that had been his undoing.，In the Crump household, Clarence stood for all that was brilliant and intellectual, while Isobel stood for all that was fairy-like and charming. Moses felt himself a cipher, of no account whatever, in this wonderful home. He would need an extra administration of sympathy from Betty on his return. He thought at that moment very tenderly of the great brown eyes that “looked like they loved everybody.”，St. Elmo hung back, electing to stay with the hero who had rescued him from the dangers of the wood.“Billy! My—boy!” Mrs. Bennett bent over him; and he felt a tear where her cheek touched his.

In his distress his wandering eye discovered a bunch of vine ties, short pieces of soft hemp rope for fastening vines to their supporting stakes. They were hanging against the rear of the coop, and a gust of wind had blown them into view. Like a flash he sprang and caught them; tied several together in quick, strong knots, and lashed himself to the little tree. Then he took up the board again, poised it at a perpendicular, calculated the angle, and slowly dropped it. Would the end reach the sill? No, it was too short!,When Moses reached the barn he found Mr. Wopp just drawing up his team of heavy-work horses beside a small corral where the hay was to be deposited. On the load beside Mr. Wopp. Moses’ wondering eyes beheld Jethro—Jethro whose greatest joy was to run beside any vehicle and range the country as far as he could on both sides of the trail.,“Come with me, Billy; I must wash up. I’ve had a dusty drive up Spring Mountain; you know the roads aren’t watered up there.”,“Here you, Moses,” shouted his mother from the top of the stairs, “I heerd the pantry door squeakin’, no eatin’ till the job’s done.” She further informed him that stopping to eat “et inter his time too much an’ the work must be done afore dark.”,Betty staggered with her burden out into the garden to leave with her flowers the benediction of her presence and also to crave a few small favors for herself.,The boy gave her a squeeze that made her last words come in jerks. “That’s a mean trick to play on a fellow,—chuck such a responsibility on a twelve-year-old. Say I must or I mustn’t, mamma.” He caught her hand and gently tweaked her fingers.,“What song would you like, Betty?”,“Wait till the clouds roll by, Jenny,,“Wot’s the use of livin’ if Betty grows them there wings they talk of?” he demanded of the fowl as they scurried from his path.,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.,“But Roderick Dhu died from fighting Fitz-James; I hate to give Jimmy a dying part.”,“Yes, yes; take us to the park, papa,” piped one half of the Siamese Twins..