Dragon's Crash

Dragon's Crash Register and receive 1888k Sometimes all the small meanness of everyday life is swept away by a great calamity, and the world forgets to hate, and opens its great heart of love. Such an event came through the catastrophe in San Francisco. It inclined every ear, moistened every eye. From all the world’s pocketbook came the golden dollars; from every soul the longing to do; and when it was done, disappointment because it was so little.,“No, I didn’t forget; the water was low, and I left it running on purpose. But it’s that west wind; she’s a hummer. She can pump faster ’n the old waste pipe can discharge.”,But another and unexpected crash followed, and a shower of burning oil shot up and caught May Nell’s flimsy paper frock.,DOCTOR CARTER was not in when Billy arrived at his office breathless and hatless. He had not foreseen this. All the way to town his thoughts had raced with his wheel. He had planned how he could tell his story the quickest; had thought of no other ear for his confidence than Doctor Carter’s, the kind, all-understanding physician who had fought valiantly if losingly to save Billy’s father; who had ever since been the most thoughtful of friends as well as the best of physicians. He seemed to Billy the only man to trust with his secret. This was something that could not be told to the best mother in the world, even not considering the fright it would give her; it was quite out of a woman’s world.,Nell confessed she had heard of it.，Finally, Ebenezer Wopp’s musings, which had been gathering force as he worked, burst into speech. For a quiet man he became almost oratorical. Then he fell to soliloquizing audibly.，“Oh, I s’pose she can, only a fellow doesn’t expect it of her. How came you out here? I thought you’d be watching for refugees.”，“I mix up words that way sometimes, too,” the child excused.“Don’t Betty look jist too sweet,” she murmured when she had finally located the child, “Her hair looks as ef she had got tangled up in the milky way an’ there was nothin’ on it but star-dust.”

At this moment the dining-room door opened and the daughter of the house entered the room.,Max, whose father was a gardener, knew wizard’s tricks with seeds and soils; and as Farmer and Forester to the syndicate, gave his knowledge right and left with happy importance. He taught the girls how to plan and plant their flower beds, and started the boys on a career of vegetable-raising that made them feel rich before they began; talked trees to Harold and other farmer boys, and astonished his father by the questions he asked and the work he did.,The first act over, a troop of black-faced comedians occupied the stage.,“Anyhow, Mar, that fust punkin pie Par got was a howlin’ success.”,Billy sprang up. The dark man of the sinister house was passing on his way to town; had answered a horseman’s salute. The boy could not see the house; but on the high hill above it he saw the other brother, regardless of the Sabbath, hoeing his vineyard.,“Oh, poor li’l Nancy wants in!” She raised the window and gently lifted the cat into the room. Running to her place at the table, she poured half of her cup of milk into a saucer and set it in a sunny spot on the floor.,A three-legged rooster appeared. And Sir Thomas Katzenstein, according to schedule, roamed his box in great agitation, though in fine form, impressively carrying out the label on his cage, “Baby Royal Bengal Tiger.”,Moses came bearing an achievement of spicy, opaque amber supported and surrounded by tantalizing, toast-brown crust. Before the expectant Mr. Wopp, however, had time to note these details, there was a quick rush of a small black and white object, a crash, some ear-splitting howls, as Moses, pie, Jethro, and one of Mrs. Wopp’s best blue dinner plates were precipitated against Mr. Wopp’s legs. Down his Sunday trousers meandered a yellow glacier which Mrs. Wopp regarded with dismay.,What if the Italians should be there? Impossible. Surely they would be on the mountain fighting fire. What if the door should be locked? The thought made him tremble, yet he hurried on and softly tried the handle. It would not open!,All went well with the preparation; and on a glorious spring night in the full moon, the town and countryside jammed the Opera House “to its eyebrows,” Billy said, looking through the peephole in the curtain to the high window seats crowded with boys.,“You look orful, jist like you was growin’ a pair of speckled toothbrushes. What ’ll Mar say? You carn’t go to school like that.”,“Yet let him sleep downstairs,” Edith persisted..