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wengo Electronics online - V1.4.7 “But it’s a secret,” she whispered in smothered distress. “Please to go!”,Billy stooped to tie shoestrings already tidy; he was gaining time for thinking. “I reckon doing things you don’t like is work, and doing things you do like is play,” he explained, doubtfully.,He smiled wanly, and her heart ached for him; but she knew sympathy was unsafe just then. “If you could see that comical, crooked eye of yours blinking at me, like a chicken asking your intentions, you’d laugh, Billy.”,He was not more inquisitive than other boys, yet the mystery, the many uncanny tales told of the old house, fired him with a desire to know its secrets. Long before he was born a murder had left its stain there. The owners, suspected but unconvicted, moved away; and for years the house stared vacantly at passers. The coming of the Italians had only increased its bad name. Late travellers on the lonely road declared that shadowy forms and flickering lights passed the lower windows and down into the cavernous basement; yet no sounds ever came from behind the barred doors.,Mrs. Bennett came in and tried to learn the trouble; but it was some time before May Nell could be induced to tell.，“I don’t give two whoops ef he does,” Betty was bubbling with suppressed mirth.，Betty was still faintly laughing at Moses’ spirited retort to his mother’s observations on his singing.，“Stir yerself Moses or I’ll hev the zoo ready afore yer tickets are writ.”Howard rode his chestnut saddle-horse “The Kid,” while Nell had “Ladybird.” Moses was not so pious by nature as his mother, and he had flatly refused to have his pinto’s disposition spoiled by giving her such a name as “Hephzibah” his mother’s choice.

CHAPTER XVII BILLY TO-DAY,Here Mrs. Wopp related for the hundredth time the account of the ketchup disaster.,“Yes; but—oh, Billy, it’s awful to have to grow up and be proper. I begged mamma not to put my dresses down, but I’m past thirteen, and big as she is. And—”,Billy was the sun, dressed in a pale yellow tunic, and crowned with a fillet of sun-bursts cut from gilt paper. He came but a little way on the stage from the south for each of his short solos; and the others pelted him back. Especially did he hide from Rain behind Cloud, a tall girl in a small ocean of gray tulle.,“Here! Sit down on the bank.” Billy himself was trembling so he felt it safer to see Jimmy sitting. “I’ll get—Twinnies, run, run to the tank and wet your handkerchief. Quick!”,“No, no! Don’t, mother! I’ll run away! I’ll—” He groaned and left his sentence unfinished.,He felt his mother start. “You’re too young for hard work, Billy; you do enough as it is.”,“Alone, mamma said,” came the second voice.,“I hate to have you stay without Jean,” Billy objected.,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.,“She won’t do it; she said so before. She wants to be Alan-bane.”,“Fer the love o’ Mike, kid, how did you git here?” said Moses, rousing the small sleeper. “Gosh, but yer face needs warshin’.”.