Alphabet books

Alphabet books fun slot machines "I guess I've found it, Bill. Come over close, so's I kin touch you, then we'll be movin' 'long. Hully gee! but I'm wet. Got both them charms safe?","Well, fer the land sakes alive, Maurice!" she cried. "It is good to see you up ag'in. You've had a hard pull of it, poor lad. Dear heart! but it's thinned you a lot, too! Think of any mortal boy changin' so in two short weeks.",Maurice stooped and filled his arms with a load of kindling. "I dunno how," he replied, "but you usually find out a way fer everythin'. What's the matter with you lettin' on you lost part of that candy?","If you had somethin' sweet an' soothin' to give him," Billy suggested. "Pine syrup, er hoarhound, er somethin' like that, now—","Oh yes," said a voice.，"You shet right up, Tom!" commanded his wife. "Ain't it nuthin' to you that your son grows up wild and uneddicated?"，He bade her good-morning with profound respect. Her dog barked in his face, and she silenced it by lifting it under her arm.，Croaker considered this last statement a moment. Then he carefully raised one foot and twisted half way around on the bar."Yep. Have you found the stuff they stole from the store, Bill?"

It was broad daylight when Anson, in response to an angry call from the bottom of the stairway, sat up in bed. Vaguely he realized that in some dire way this glad morning proclaimed a day of doom, but his drowsy senses were still leaping vast chasms of dreamland—striving to slip from the control of saner reasoning and drift away with a happy abandon of dire results to follow. What boy has not had the same experience, even although he knew that a razor-strop, wielded by a vigorous hand, would in all probability accomplish quickly what his drowsy will had failed to accomplish? Anson was just dropping off into the lulling arms of Morpheus when that extra sense, possessed by all boys in a measure and by certain boys in particular, warned him back to wakefulness and a realization of his danger.,At last, sick and dizzy, he turned from the place and with raft and pole fought his way back to the shore. Never again, he told himself, would he try to fathom further what lay in Lost Man's Swamp. Weary and perspiring, he climbed the wooded upland. He turned and dipped into the willows, intending to take the shortest way home through the hardwoods. On top of the beech knoll he paused for a moment to let his eyes rest on the big house in the walnut grove. In some vague way his mind connected its owner with that dead waste of stinking marsh. Why, he wondered, had Hinter chosen this lonely spot on which to build his home? As he turned to strike across the neck of woods between him and the causeway the man about whom he had just been thinking stepped out from a clump of hazel-nut bushes directly in his path.,He seemed to know the handwriting on the envelope, and there was a frown upon his face as he broke the big seal. He read it where he stood. It was a letter from a Captain Rousby informing him that he owed him the sum of one hundred guineas, that this money as a debt of honour had been payable immediately on proof of the loss of the wager, but that so far from having received it, Captain Rousby had been waiting for nine months without obtaining further satisfaction than the now wearisome and well-worn excuse that Mr Lawrence could not immediately pay, that he was expecting to obtain employment in the course of the month which would enable him to discharge this debt with interest if Captain Rousby thought proper. The Captain informed Mr Lawrence that last week Mrs Rousby had presented him with twins, a catastrophe which greatly increased his expenses at a time when he was without employment, and when money was never more urgently needed. Captain Rousby then went on to inform[Pg 123] Mr Lawrence that if a portion of this debt, say twenty-five guineas, was not sent to him by the first of June, it would be his unpleasant duty to visit Old Harbour Town, call upon Sir William Lawrence and state the facts of the case to him as an officer and a gentleman. If he could obtain no satisfaction from the Admiral, it would be his painful duty—a duty that must be singularly distasteful to a man who had been a messmate and shipmate of Mr Lawrence—to take such steps as his lawyer might advise.,"No." Mrs. Keeler shook her head with finality, "I can't trust you out o' my sight. You gotta set right there where you be.","My son, Captain Weaver, my son!" broke in the Admiral tremulously.,"Mr Lawrence is very daring," answered Lucy. "I can easily believe that the hunchback [Pg 374]Paul, as he is called, had orders if he did not meet me to go to the house and deliver the letter to me in person.","Doctors!" she cried scornfully. "Little enough they know the needs of a woman at such a time. A doctor may be all right in his place, but his place ain't here among us woods folk. I tell you now I know my duty an' I'll do it because they need me.",The boy, who had been studying the man before him, turned away to execute his father's order. If he knew anything about teachers—and he did—he and the other lads of the community were in for a high old time, he told himself. He went down to the gate, the dog trotting at his heels.,Beneath the shadow of the coming storm the forest gloom deepened to velvet blackness. Suddenly a tongue of lightning licked the tree-tops and a crash of thunder shattered the stillness. A few heavy rain-drops spattered on the branches above the heads of the waiting three. Billy and Maurice, a strange terror tugging at their heart-strings, waited for old Harry to give the word forward. But Harry seemed to be in no great hurry to voice such command. Fear had gripped his superstitious soul and the courage loaned him from the squat demijohn was fast oozing away.,"What you want'a do, Croaker?" he asked, stroking the bird's neck feathers smooth.,"What is that you say?" cried Aunt Caroline, starting in her chair and peering over her gold-rimmed glasses at Mr Lawrence.,"Oh, gee whitticker! nobody 'ud believe that, Bill.".