Rummy Arenal

Rummy Arenal Register +188k “I’m the Royal Egyptian Fortune Teller!” Bess announced, in a deep voice. “This is my desert tent. I shall reveal the past, present, and future to those only whom my favor shall designate. Slaves, the lamps!”,Billy took no heed of time till he saw the man above shoulder his hoe, pick up his wine jug, and start down the hill. At that Billy’s heels grew swift. He scurried out of his hiding place, slipped rapidly through the brush, found his wheel, and bowled off. No languor or heaviness now in body or mind. Every atom of him was alert as on the night of the opera, yet not so normally alert; for the evil atmosphere of the place was in his soul, filling his teeming brain with imaginings of many crimes.,“I’m chored from mornin’ till night, an’ arfter I go to sleep I do some more chorin’ jist to keep my hand in.” Moses was in a distinctly peevish mood.,How did he know her name, she wondered, yet answered more bravely than she felt. “Yes, sir.” She thought it best to be as polite as possible. “I’m alone now, but the boys are expected every minute.” She would say “boys” even if Clarence didn’t come; it sounded more protecting.,“Here, slow-pokes, drop yer carrots in this here bin.” He indicated an empty oat-bin.，The whistle shrilled up the narrow valley, echoing back and forth from the steep green hills that bounded it.，At the door of the Crump household, Moses stood before the daughter of the house who answered the bell, burning hot with the fever of an overwhelming embarrassment. His body glowed so that steam might have been seen arising from his dripping garments. He almost yearned for incarceration in an ice-house. His personal pulchritude had not been enhanced by the experience and the critical eyes of the young girl failed to express any degree of admiration or sympathy. More than ever Moses longed for the encircling arms of Betty.，Mrs. Bennett smiled at her mistake and went in, while Billy took up his mower. The girls looked at one another in the mute scrutiny children bestow on newcomers, May Nell the least embarrassed of the three.“If she steams,” Harold put in sagely.

“O Billy,” his mother laughed, “you need not decide to-night. Besides, it was all Bess’s nonsense. I can’t quite imagine my heedless boy in a pulpit.”,CHAPTER VI.—AN EVENING IN THE WOPP PARLOR.,“He didn’t come roun’ here, I kin tell you though,” joined in Mrs. Wopp, energetically. In speaking of Mr. Zelamba, her voice modulated harshly into a key of hyper-acidulated sharps. “I says to Miss Gordon, an’ she jined in with me, a piannerist may be well ’nough as an actor man, but when it comes to takin’ fer keeps, give me a real man.” After taking a deep breath she continued, “My, but he makes a heap of money an’ he loves it, too; but when he gits to be about forty, the lines in his fiz’ll be as tight as my clothes-rope arter a spell of rain.”,When the train snorted into the station the two were there, Billy with his loaf under his arm, his can dangling. Most of the arrivals were townsfolk home from visits to the stricken city; but a few, evidently strangers, descended and stood by themselves.,The words were hardly out of his mouth when the sound of an approaching team was heard. Betty eyed ruefully the silk shawl she had flung on the ground.,As the stove door opened for the intrepid Moses, out flew Tillie the white bantam hen now as black as a crow with soot. She fluttered into the face of Moses who was kneeling before the stove.,Jimmy was the first to stand and cheer.,“This aint got poultry in it nor moosic nor nothin’,” complained one small youth. Moses made several further attempts to comply with the modest request of his teacher and at last each child held in grubby hands a book of quaint verses glorified by the tonic sol fah.,“What! Bread jist outer the oving! There aint a sinner this minute but what begun his vile career on a slice of fresh bread. Indisgestion shore fills jails an’ ’sylums more nor drink. You carn’t hev one slice till to-morrcr.”,“Here’s Mis’ Mifsud an’ St. Elmo comin’ in the buckboard,” he announced.,“I am not going to let you see any more compositions,” exclaimed Nell, “You are just making fun of my poor children.”,THE next morning Billy had a “temperature.” His mother decided against school for that day. At first he was glad. He didn’t care if he had forty temperatures. He thought almost anything in the way of fever was cooler than he would feel if the boys—and the girls—should see his face. Not that this was the first time he had been scratched in a fight; before he had not cared who knew. To-day it was different,—there were things about this fight he wished he could forget, even though he knew Jimmy was not likely to die..