Dragon Tiger

Dragon Tiger Download +128K - V5.4.1 CHAPTER XIX.—BETTY’S ILLNESS.,CHAPTER II.—CONCERNING BETTY.,“All but Sour; an’ sister’s fixed him. He’s crazy over music, and she got his father to let him take lessons, and that kid’s her slave ever since. But it isn’t minding, Ladybird; the guys take my cue, and we tell things we’ve hunted up in the week about the lesson; and sister tells things, and we’re so busy we forget to be silly.”,Visitors! He saw them through the window. Every step was growing more painful,—he must get to his room. The space from the woodshed roof to the tower room, before so easily surmounted by a swinging jump, looked now as high and far as Mount Whitney. Back to the window he turned. The firelight was dancing on the walls. Sister Edith was talking gayly to neighbors who were standing near the door, and May Nell was snuggled beside his mother on the couch, the great yellow cat, or a part of him, sprawling on her small lap.,And the shouts that greeted this fiat shook the old barn and made the hens in the hay cackle with fright.，Flora came into view, clad in palest pink, and wreathed with almond blossoms. Wherever she stepped the ground was white with almond snow. Gnomes and elves peeped from behind gray rocks and tree-trunks, but fled as she came near, following the ever-beckoning fairies.，Betty reflected a moment. “When they got tired dancing they ’journed to the pansy bed. The queen set down on a big purple pansy that was jist like a lovely throne. The other fairies came an’ bowed low in front o’ her, then they gathered up their long silver trains an’ walked backwards. Then the queen rose up an’ walked all round among the flowers an’ the other fairies follered her. They waved their wands over all the flower beds, an’ that’s why they’ve all growed so lovely.”，“You remember that story about a man who died for love of a girl because he knew he ought not to marry her? I thought that sort kind of noble, but you said there was nobler. Do you remember?”“My racer has only one eye anyways,” said Betty defiantly as she twined a piece of nasturtium vine round the noble brow of the victor.

When they entered the Sheriff’s office again it was two o’clock. He was there, and gave Billy a private audience far more graciously than he would have done had not Doctor Carter’s presence been voucher for the importance of the matter. When the boy repeated his story, less confidently, less dramatically than before, yet not needing the Doctor’s comment to prove its value, the Sheriff drew a long breath and emphasized it with a blow of his fist on the table.,Max was the first to be quite ready with his exhibit. It was a queer creature that one gradually discovered to be some sort of a bird; though such a one had never before been seen on land or sea. Max had arrayed his mother’s big white gander for the occasion. A turkey-tail fan made a huge breastplate, if one can imagine a breastplate of feathers. All the long-tailed roosters that had been killed in town for months, one would guess, had contributed to the coat of sprawling feathers that was tied over the body of the bird. And no one knew by what magic the boy had coaxed some one to lend him the magnificent peacock plumes that rose high above the little wiggling goose tail.,“Then I went in an’ spoke to ’em ’s though I hadn’t heard a word, and hustled off to bed. I thought ’most all night, and decided that sister shan’t wait a day longer for me to grow up. I’m going to hustle for myself, so she can get married.”,He laughed coarsely. “George Smith’s kid, all right. You’ve got the same high way with you.”,The Wopp parlor was seldom entered, except on very special occasions or when Mrs. Wopp with formality and no undue haste dusted the furniture. The room had an air of solemnity and gloom, absent in the cheerful dining-room where the family usually sat. A homemade rag carpet covered the floor. Six slippery, horsehair chairs, one of them a rocker, and a horsehair couch, which did not invite confidence, were ranged stiffly around the sides of the room. In one corner was an ancient organ, wheezy and querulous with neglect, and in another stood a lofty what-not, on whose numerous shelves were deposited the family treasures. Here, was a woolly lamb at one time beloved of Moses; there his tin savings bank. Stiffly upright stood Betty’s wax doll Hannah, seldom played with and then only for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wopp was represented by a few shell boxes and a match box of china flanked by a sleek china cat.,“Only little girls see fairies ever,” was the reply.,Going down the stairs his loud unmelodious singing reached the ears of those in the bedroom. When he arrived at the foot, Betty, whose ears were attuned to all acts of outlawry, had reason to believe that Moses performed three successive somersaults.,The boy scudded lightly across the narrow open space to the shelter of a manzanita tree, and looked back again; but no one appeared. Did he still hear the softly quarrelling voices? He fancied so. The sudden dip of the sun behind a hill darkened the scene threateningly, and brought a return of “the creeps.”,When the two arrived, Nell Gordon was sitting with the sick child and crooning softly to her. Howard Eliot drew near, accidentally touching the firm round arm of Nell as he did so.,“You don’t want to see your mother now, do you, boy? No more do you feel like jabbering with Bess at our table. Come over to the hotel, and we’ll lunch together.”,However, the stove-pipe was at last cleaned and ready to put up. Moses’ moroseness had by now developed into a complaint, the chief symptoms of which were sniffling and coughing.,Peter Stolway carried a large paper bag, and as the carrots fell with resounding thuds into the bin, they seemed like inebriated question marks, so ungainly and irregular were their shapes. One giddy carrot teetered on the edge as though about to entertain the onlookers by an acrobatic performance..