Lucky Hit

Lucky Hit ASIA'S NO. 1 BAKER CHANNEL “Oh, yes; yes, there is, Billy.” May Nell lifted a teary face. “Five children! If it had been two, or perhaps I could possibly bring up three; but f-five, o-o-oh!” she wailed again, heedless of the laughter around her.,It had stopped raining, but was still cloudy. This was the hour when Billy usually wheeled long miles by himself, dreaming dreams no one but a boy knows how to dream. Nothing short of a downpour ever hindered him; thus mother and sister knew it was genuine self-sacrifice that kept him beside the little girl through the long afternoon.,“No worse ’n you, I reckon,” was the rueful response. Billy’s appearance justified Jimmy’s speech; for freckles were standing out large and ghastly from one or two very white spots on the younger boy’s battered face. “Can you get home alone?”,“It was quite all right,” answered Nell, anxiously watching for the reappearance of Mr. Wopp’s knife, “Mr. Eliot gave me a glorious drive over the prairie behind his team of greys, but,” with a sly look towards the young rancher, “I don’t believe he likes to meet trains.”,They came upon him a second later, insensible, his head bleeding from a scalp wound. Hurriedly the Sheriff lifted him close to the brook, dashed water over his face, washed out the cut a little, and bound it with his handkerchief, not untenderly if in haste; for Billy had won something more than his approval.，“Oh ’bout the fairies an’ stars an’ lovely things that grownups know nothin’ about.”，“All right. I’m off!”，“Me neither,” George endorsed.“Land O’ Goshen! Ye’ve a peck of nails in the wall orlready. You couldn’t add two an’ two without wrappin’ up yer thumb an’ countin’ what’s left,” remonstrated Mrs. Wopp.

The ivy and the Idean vine.’,From the lower slopes of the Cedar Hills issued many wide wooded ravines. Of these none were prettier than Spring Coulee which even in winter retained its attractiveness, having a goodly sprinkling of evergreen trees among the poplars and cottonwoods lining its sides. A grassy level formed the bottom of the coulee. Through the centre of this a little crystal-clear stream, rising in the hills behind and swelled by an occasional spring which gushed from the sides of the ravine, danced over its pebbly bed to join Berry Creek a mile away.,she quoted glibly. “I know a lot more of it. Do you?”,“Then you don’t love yer li’l sister ef you don’t want her to look like you.” Betty almost wept.,“What does that mean?” queried Moses.,Betty Wopp was gambolling along the road with other little school-girls and heard the jeers addressed to the wretched boy. The penetrating sense of Moses’ need of her brought her to a halt. Indignation made her tight little braids of hair assume an aspect as terrific as Medusa’s snaky coils. She ran lightly up to Moses and walked beside him.,She clapped her hands. “Oh, I’m glad you like fairies, too. Do you know about Bagdad and Semiramide and Good King Arthur and Ivanhoe, and all the other beautiful things in the world?” she asked, breathlessly.,“What song would you like, Betty?”,“Jevver see sich a useless boy? Been learnin’ spellin’s orl day, I ’xpect.”,Jimmy tried not to look pleased, but failed. Something about May Nell attracted him, whether it was her beauty, her fearlessness, or her air of distinction he did not know. It was really her recognition of something fine in him that his cold and irascible father had almost whipped out of him.,“They won’t be watching for visitors,” the man answered; “they’ll be hiding the plant and skinning out of here,—if they haven’t already,” he added apprehensively. He stood[217] back to the wind and scanned the opposite bank. “There they are, two of our fellows; the chaps haven’t escaped in that direction.”,Along the ridge of soft sand left by receding waters Billy let his first contract to Harold, who immediately marshalled the “kindergarten” with their broken fire shovels, kitchen spoons, what not, and set them to digging briskly. “Straight to the line, mind you,” he sang out from time to time, as he set his pins along the line the “engineers had run.” Max was superintendent of telegraph construction; and Charley Strong, “the Strong Man,” and Jackson contracted for the tunnel. They were to start from each side, meet exactly in the middle in sixty days,—a minute stood for a day,—or pay five million dollars fine. And over all Billy kept a watchful eye, cast the glamour of his eager spirit..