बी फोटो

बी फोटो Register and receive 1888k “Where you’ll be safe till I let your father know I’ve got you.”,It was a proud and happy family that returned to the Wopp homestead late that evening. The air being chilly, a fire was lighted in the dining-room and around this inspiring centre there was much discussion of the days doings. The unparalleled sagacity of Moses was the jubilant theme running in the minds of his parents and sister. Moses bore his honors modestly.,As the children left the school-house, Betty was met by Job. He appeared to be headed for a point at an angle of about forty-five degrees from his mistress, but it was only his corner-wise way of walking, caused by his defective eye. Notwithstanding his seemingly erratic course he reached Betty’s side and thrust his head into the pocket of her small pinafore. He found there what put him into high good humor. Gaily he strutted after his little mistress. Bringing up the rear came Moses shuffling along, accompanied by Jethro. He took from his pocket a huge bun.,“They’d look purtier, Glory, ef you’d put more colors in,” commented Mrs. Wopp.,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.，“I’ll mow in the morning. Let me stay and visit Pretty—Harold, I mean—till sundown; can’t I, mamma?” He patted her cheek with a vigor that made her wink. “You know you can’t refuse your darling boy,” he wheedled.，Yet almost before the prayer was breathed the child with incredible swiftness scudded across the bending board and stood safe by his side!，“No, it isn’t, sister! I’ve thought of a way out. Keep the kids straight here—I’ll be back in a minute.”“Sunday School, too? How long you’ll be away!”

He laughed coarsely. “George Smith’s kid, all right. You’ve got the same high way with you.”,“You hitch Jethro to yer ole ’xpress waggon, ’n I’ll hitch Job to a prune-box with spool-wheels,” suggested Betty.,He climbed cat-like to the crest again, slid through the brush, dashed across bare spots, jumped from rocks that jutted in his way, struck stones but righted himself before falling, truly “hit only the high places,” as he breathlessly told the girls waiting for him at Ellen’s Isle.,“‘Mosey’? Does that mean ‘little Moses’?”,Moses blushed deeply and dared not raise his eyes from the ground lest Isobel should see his embarrassment.,“Yes, I can see that the wind, the shaking tower, the creaking mill, would bring such dreams,” his mother said. “Hear the wind howl now!”,“Well, I’ll be blowed, gosh! Mar’d larf to hear you tarlk. You’ll darn my socks, two bits or no two bits, ef Mar says.”,“There ain’t a shadder of a doubt Moses takes arter his Par in the gift of the gab,” was Mrs. Wopp’s genial rejoinder.,Billy had the excitable musical temperament. He spent his forces lavishly, and it was because of this that he was a leader; could think and act quickly in emergencies, as when he saved the operetta from failure. Edith and her mother knew that he had lived hard through the past few weeks, that next to Edith herself he had carried the entertainment, though Jean had been a host also. So it pleased Mrs. Bennett that afternoon to see Billy start off alone for the country.,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.,LITTLE by little they learned something of May Nell’s story. Her mother had intended to start for New York on the morning of the earthquake, having been called there by her own mother’s illness. Mrs. Smith, though held to the last by household business, had let her little daughter go to visit a widowed aunt and cousin, who lived in a down-town hotel, and who were to bring May Nell to meet her mother at the Ferry Building the next morning. But where at night had stood the hotel with its many human lives housed within, the next morning’s sunshine fell upon a heap of ruins burning fiercely. A stranger rescued May Nell, though her aunt and cousin had to be left behind, pinned to their fiery death.,For a horror-stricken moment no one spoke. Even the dumb creatures were still; and Buzz, thinking it all for his benefit, watched open-mouthed for the next act in the play..