Deltin, Daman

Deltin, Daman Ten years of prestige He sat by the table in his dressing-room with angry storm-swept countenance. He had been capturing loud plaudits with his rag-time, until intoxicated with success, he swept into a tornado of music by Moskowski. The applause died away; two ladies in the front row began chatting. The enraged artist jumped from the piano-stool, and shouting “Pigs!” raced from the platform.,“Can I hev a piece of jelly-roll, Mar?” coaxed Betty, stemming the tide of her brother’s complaints.,He was out early wheeling from house to house, where various parts of the “show” were receiving last touches. One by one he gathered each “attraction,” and herded them all to Jimmy’s big barn, where the procession was to form. Some were late, Bess for one; but Billy was not anxious about her.,When Betty returned from school in the afternoon, she beheld snowy billowing apparel on the clothes-line. Mrs. Wopp, being very thrifty in the matter of using up flour and sugar sacks for underwear, had a motley collection of garments suspended by wooden pegs. A night-shirt of Mr. Wopp’s bore the inscription “Three Roses” dimly outlined in pink, while on the southern portion of a pair of more intimate garments could be discerned, fading into palest blue. “Great Western Mills.” The wind was causing a riotous time among the cheerful array of reconstructed sacks, and as Betty ran down the path singing “Twenty froggies went to school,” a sugar sack sleeve of Moses’ shirt embraced a flour sack bosom of his father’s undergarment; and “Pure Cane Sugar“ saluted “Ogiveme’s Mills.” Betty cheerfully performed her task of bringing in the clothes saturated with wind and sunshine. She thought the sweetest smell in the world next to morning-glories and nasturtiums was the smell of clean clothes fresh from the line.,Going down the stairs his loud unmelodious singing reached the ears of those in the bedroom. When he arrived at the foot, Betty, whose ears were attuned to all acts of outlawry, had reason to believe that Moses performed three successive somersaults.，“Yes, thank you. But most my heart is hungry. Will you help me to find my mama?”，“Yeh, we went to the shootin’ gallery, an’ the amuseum, an’ got inter a little square cage an’ shot away up to the top of an orful high buildin’ an’ got a sparrer’s eye view of the city.”，“Here Mosey,” said Betty, “is a tin crown. You can fasten it on with this wire. See?”“I took a stick of kindling from the kitchen and crept out to chase the thief away; but just then Flash trotted around the corner of the house. He’s been on the front lawn all the morning watching for gophers; wouldn’t come when we called him.”

“The Lord loveth a cheerful liver, Moses,” said his mother encouragingly, as she saw the growing acidity of the boy’s countenance. Mrs. Wopp had never forgotten a certain missionary service, during which she had studied a text in gold lettering of old English type on the wall. The uncertain light of stained glass falling on the last word had made it difficult to read. But at last realizing that a sound liver and cheerfulness are closely associated, she had seen no incongruity in her translation of the text.,Inside the church matters were beginning to resume a normal condition. But Mr. Wells still badly shaken and feeling unable to proceed announced, “My friends we will conclude our service with a hymn. Will some one suggest a suitable one.”,“Why, you see,” Billy hesitated, for he was modest, “sister has a class of us heathen boys, and—well, you see, it’s this way; sister says,—she’s partial, you know,—she says I have influence; if I don’t giggle the others won’t, and she gets on O. K.”,“Oh, she’ll eat when she gets hungry, never fear.”,“They’ve stolen her, all right. I don’t know why, but I know who,—it’s the Ha’nt people!” Billy panted, coming out of the Lodge.,Choosing a piece of bright yellow chalk she began to inscribe the golden text on the blackboard. She pressed too hard and the chalk cracked and fell to the floor. Pete Stolway vaulted out of his chair to capture the yellow pencil, but he had the misfortune to step on both the pieces of crayon, crushing them to sand, a heap of yellow grit.,“To think you let that good-fer-nothin’ Ken Judson, meet our schoolmarm,” wailed Mrs. Wopp. “Why he is the most ungodly feller in town. His folks in England send him a lot of money so’s he will keep away from them, an’ he spends it all in drinkin’ an’ gamblin’.”,The sound was an ominous warning to Moses, to finish his breakfast with all possible speed.,“Yes, we shall marry her ourselves,” Evelyn echoed; while both girls made childish efforts to rehabilitate the depressed cousins.,“He ran up and touched noses with Tom like a Feegee Islander,—are they the people that touch noses for ‘How do you do?’”,“You look like some kind-faced happygo-lucky cow, chewin’ her cud,” teased Mrs. Wopp, standing at the parlor door and noting the reminiscent moving of her son’s jaws.,[89]“Mother, do come and look at the procession,” Edith called cautiously from the trellises, where she was slyly watching..