Xmas Collection - 20 Lines

Xmas Collection - 20 Lines Ten years of prestige THE place Billy called the Fo’castle was a tiny room in the sloping windmill tower. It was level with the second floor of the house, and a narrow, railed bridge connected it with a door in his mother’s room. Under it was the above-ground cellar, overhead the big tank. Still higher whirled the great white wings that pumped the beauty-giving water to lawn and gardens.,“We’ll play there’s a strike in the saw-mills, Dutchy, and this is scab labor,” Billy excused amiably. And for a fact the white cotton string carried the messages quite safely from the “Front,” where Jimmy and George laid out the “line” over wonderful grades, across impossible gorges; and “wired” back for further orders. Harry Potter was the operator at the “Front,” and Vilette,—“Women do operate, you know,” she said,—Vilette was the proud holder of “the key” at Headquarters, where Clarence Hammond strutted around as Messenger; and because he was the “son of the Boss,” bullied his Cousin Harry unmercifully.,CHAPTER XVIII.—A PAIR OF CHECKED TROUSERS.,“Now ef you would jist play ‘Home Sweet Home’ with variations, my dear, we’ll arterwards hev a game of crokinole. Crokinole is sich an amusin’ game.”,“Never mind, Bouncer. I’ve another card up my sleeve!” He patted and hugged the old dog till his tail waved once more gracefully over his back. “Here! Try this. Sic ’em!” Billy thrust the scraps of red silk under his nose; and in an instant Bouncer was off after the new scent.，CHAPTER IV.—WASH-DAY AT MRS. WOPP’S.，“What’s matter’s Gordon?” he enquired anxiously.，CHAPTER XIX.—BETTY’S ILLNESS.“I can dance, too,” she said with childish pride.

“That’s bul—dandy.”,“But I asked for her, mamma.” Billy’s voice lost its exuberance. His mother never had looked so tired, he thought for the second time that day.,The chinking began in earnest. Moses stood, turning till each freckle on his ruddy face shone with honest sweat.,“The darned old robber!” Billy started up and walked restlessly toward the door.,As he reached for his cap a door opposite the one through which he had passed opened, and the grey head of the sexton appeared.,The Sheriff was a small man with fair, curly hair like a girl’s; but there was that in his eye that reinforced his pistol, made the big fellow quail, the other mutter a low warning. The two lifted the chest by its strong handles and stepped out.,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.,“I come! I come at thy call, O Sun!,“The work I am at now Howard, requires mostly a sense of humor. Just look at this and ask yourself how I manage to keep my face straight sometimes at school.” Howard took the paper handed to him and had hardly read a line before his risibility was tickled.,But minds may stray though eyes seem attentive. Two boys began to indulge surreptitiously in the mild amusement of extracting toothsome kernels from refractory shells. Cracking nuts not being conducive to alertness of mind, Mrs. Wopp promptly confiscated a large bag of filberts which proved to be the joint property of Pat Bliggins and Pete Stolway.,“How much will you pay fer them fer my missionary box?” bargained the child. “Will four shinin’ new quarters do?”,“She’d like fust-rate to come, but Glory be! She’d want ter fetch her pet turkey and Jethro.”.