Space Cadets: Dice Duel

Space Cadets: Dice Duel takes strict measures to ensure that every game adheres to fair and random standards.⭐️ While Betty, mounted on a bench in the shed, was getting down her watering-can, Job, who during the afternoon had searched diligently but vainly for her, rounded the corner of the garden fence. He noted the open gate and sped towards it. As he entered the garden his eye fell on St. Elmo who stood absorbed and expectant. The turkey, his odd corner-wise gait accentuated by his anxiety of mind, rushed towards the child who at first did not notice his approach. But presently, turning around, St. Elmo beheld an apparently formidable assailant which by the most powerful flight of imagination could not be mistaken for a fairy. All escape by way of the gate was shut off by the intruder. St. Elmo’s plump legs, bare above his low socks, twinkled as he ran wildly towards the foot of the garden.,Bess’s coming launched the procession. People in the vicinity who had not before known of the presence of a circus, knew it now. Everybody talked at once, and every living thing made its own kind of a noise. Billy as Master of Ceremonies had his hands full, his voice full too, one might say.,“Oh, Billy, how could you, when mother has so much to do?” It was his sister, Edith, who spoke, her sweet face clouded with rare disapproval. Yet she went on with the music lesson she was giving.,At last the long-looked-for day arrived and by two o’clock eight children from the nearest ranches had ridden or had been brought by grownups to the Wopp farm, all arrayed in their best bibs and tuckers.,“To-morrer’ll see my revenge,” growled Moses, now thoroughly roused to action under the protection of his own roof.，Billy laughed. “Mixed again, mamma. This is Vilette,” he drew one bashful little girl nearer the stranger, “and this is Evelyn, Echo, we call her.”，“Dad an’ Mosey don’t look orful happy,” she laughed. “Smile at me, Mosey.”，She opened the lunch pail and gave him a scrap from it; ate a sandwich herself; and in a moment started off to find the Idean vine. Nothing appeared that fitted her mind’s picture of that creeper; but she found a great sheet of delicate wild clematis, covering the tangled roots of a fallen oak with its pale green tendrils. The earth was soft, the roots easily lifted; and shortly she had masses of it uprooted and trailing after her to the Lodge.“This aint got poultry in it nor moosic nor nothin’,” complained one small youth. Moses made several further attempts to comply with the modest request of his teacher and at last each child held in grubby hands a book of quaint verses glorified by the tonic sol fah.

CHAPTER XVII.—A SAMPLE OF EBENEZER WOPP’S IRE.,“Yes—go on quick! Here come folks!”,A scream from “the shack” stopped further quotations. Billy ran up the hill to learn the trouble. Only Evelyn was there in the little house built, half of boards, half of willow twigs woven lattice-wise, against a huge smooth rock. Beside this rock also ascended a cobble chimney; and the fireplace, roughly plastered, served its purpose well. Billy had made it all, and Edith wished the house fireplace would draw as well.,“Easy, mates. Kids, belay there, till we launch her!” This to the gaping youngsters always in the way.,“Who wants to drive my trained bear an’ monkey? Only a dime stranger, only a dime!”,The dance was held in a new barn of which the floor was especially good. Indeed the young people of the family had seen to that. Unfortunately the stable end of the building was already in use and this proved to be somewhat inconvenient. During the festivities of the evening one delicate lady fainted from excitement and overpowering stable odors. She speedily revived, however, on being carried into the fresh air and soused with a bucket of cold water. The building was illuminated with lanterns and an occasional oil lamp. Benches were ranged along the walls. The crowd was large and as usual at these affairs men predominated in numbers. The dances were mostly square ones and when a husky caller-off became hoarse and exhausted with shouting, another took his place. He usually stood at one end of the building beside the fiddler.,So imminent had catastrophe been, that no one thought of the poor small steamer burning unchecked to the water’s edge while the procession climbed the hill; no one knew till days afterward that busy Buzz had entered the open shop and mixed Billy’s cans so that it was gasoline instead of kerosene that he fed that fated craft. But gratitude for Jimmy’s bravery and May Nell’s safety supplanted even in the youngest heart all regret for the boat.,“Go and bring him now, so you can renovate his appearance before supper,” directed the mother.,“Wot’s the use of livin’ if Betty grows them there wings they talk of?” he demanded of the fowl as they scurried from his path.,“I can walk,” she said, struggling to be put down.,For five hundred dollars a week he had pranced to the admiring vaudeville audience; but once let the artist lay bare his soul in real music and whispering reaches his ear. But there was no use complaining, no one could understand his disgust.,Rational people laughed at these stories, declared them the fancies of brains fuddled by too long a stay at the saloons in town. But Billy was not so easily satisfied. He wished to see for himself those shadowy forms; to prove to the small, scared children that, contrary to general belief, the brothers sometimes had guests. And he had a queer feeling that some way the house would have a place in his life. He admired its gloomy grandeur; planned the additions he would make if it were his own, and the gardens, the hedges of roses, and banks of fragrant smilax, that should grow there..