लॉटरी इंडिया

लॉटरी इंडिया Never in all his life had Neptune been so urged before to hurry over the Mr Lawrence looked startled when this toast was begun; but he composed his face as Short proceeded, and when everybody was extending his glass to him and wishing him all the good-luck that Short desired, he was receiving the general salutation with a composed smile and an air of courteous appreciation.,"Are you not?" said Sarby, with a peculiar smile. "Remember what Etwald said about your life-in-death!","'Tis I've bin prayin' for ye," says Biddy, taking her mistress's hand and kissing it fondly. "On me bended knees I was with the blessid beads for the last two hours. An' shure I've had me reward, now I see ye safe home agin. But indeed, Miss Mona, 'tis a sore time I've had uv it.","Innocent-looking!" echoed Jen, taking down the green wand. "How can you say such a thing? Look here, Etwald," and he laid the stick on the table. "No, don't touch it, man," he added, hastily, "there is plenty of venom in it yet. 'Tis as dangerous as a snake bite. If you touch this slender iron spike projecting from the end, you die!",But this, it may be, was all village slander, and was never borne out by anything. And Elspeth had married the gardener's son, and Sir Launcelot had married an earl's daughter; and when the first baby was born at the "big house," Elspeth came to the Towers and nursed him as she would have nursed her own little bairn, but that Death, "dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just, shining nowhere but in the dark," sought and claimed her own little one two days after its birth.，This young lady was Lucy, the only child of Captain Acton, one of the most charming, indeed one of the most beautiful girls of her time. The scene of garden and flower-beds quaintly shaped, and the backing of the noble, mellow, gleaming building with its pediment and symbolic carvings, was enchantingly in keeping with the figure and appearance of the girl, who by the magic of her looks and attire instantly transformed it into a picture charged with the colours of youth and health and a sweet and delicate spirit of life. Her apparel was prettily of the time: a straw hat, the brim projecting a little over the forehead and seated somewhat on one side, a plain light blue gown and long yellow silk gloves. The gown was without waist and bound under the bosom by a girdle. Her hair this day was dressed in tresses which hung around the face—not curls, but tender shadings of hair, as though the effect had been contrived by the fingers of the wind; but some curls reposed on her neck. Her eyes were unusually large, of a dark brown and full of liquid light. The eyelids were somewhat heavy, and looked the heavier because of their rich furniture of eyelash. The eyelashes indeed suggested at first sight that she doctored her eyes, as do actresses[Pg 20] and others; but a brief inspection satisfied the beholder that all was Nature transparent, artless, and lovely. A conspicuous charm in Lucy Acton was her colour: her cheeks always wore a natural bloom or glow; this, as in the case of her eyes, might have been suspected as the effect of art, but she blushed so readily, even sometimes on any effort of speech, the damask of her blood so wrought in her cheek on any impulse of mood or humour, that it was quickly seen the mantling glow was a charm of Nature's own gift. No girl could have been more natural, and few more beautiful than Lucy Acton. Had she lived half a century earlier she would have been one of the toasts of the nation.，“I mix up words that way sometimes, too,” the child excused.，The Admiral read on and on.As he reaches the broad stream that divides him from the land he would reach, he pauses and tries to think of any decent excuse that may enable him to walk with a bold front up to the cottage door. But no such excuse presents itself. Memory proves false. It refuses to assist him. He is almost in despair.

In the afternoon the policeman called to talk with Father. Father was very serious and Mother looked frightfully worried. Sister Asta stared with open mouth. John had a bitter time of it while the matter was being settled, and afterward Asta’s teasing voice followed him everywhere as she kept calling out: “Credit to the scho-ol! Great credit! Wonderful credit! Credit to the scho-ol!”,“So long as it isn’t you, Ladybird, it’s all right,” Billy consoled; “we can make more boats.”,Mona is watching him intently.,OH, how pleasant it was to lie in bed like this in the morning now that it was vacation! Not to have Lisa the nursemaid popping her head in at the door and saying, “John, it is time to get up. You must hurry, too.” That was what she always said.,“A whole heap. It seems that the talk was in town that the lid was going to blow off down at the border and that if they could get the Greasers riled up on the dam, the trouble would not be laid to them but simply on the general[170] bad blood between the Mexicans and Americans. Wesley and Harper were so enthusiastic they wanted to blow up the spillway and the mixing plant. Even in their enthusiasm they realized that the portion of the dam already built would be more than a job for dynamite.”,Thus the people got their first medicine pipe. It was long ago.,"My dear child, don't talk like that," he says, nervously: "you're done up, you know. Come to bed.",At first, however, it was a little ceremonious. Johnny Blossom had to stand beside Father and Mother on the great marble steps and welcome the guests. He was rather sober and felt a little shy. Father and Mother, too, although they smiled, were somewhat serious. Mother’s eyes even had tears in them.,"What were the characters which could convince so shrewd and intelligent a man as Mr Lawrence that you were mad?" enquired Captain Acton, the habitual gravity of whose face was replaced by a constant expression of astonishment.,It was late, very late, before Mrs. Johnson realised it and shooed me home to get ready to go to the train along with the brass band and all the other welcomes.,"Ay, where else?" answers the woman, sullenly who has joined them. "They brought him back to the home he will never rouse again with step or voice. 'Tis cold he is, an' silent this day.",CHAPTER X Tellef’s Grandmother.