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dear Safe casino Job’s feathers that to Betty’s eyes had taken on the glory of ostrich plumes, drooped disconsolately, while Moses denounced in fluent language the stupidity of the fowl that had caused the unfortunate episode. He declared loudly that he would like to wring the aggressive portions of those feathered culprits. The group stood for a moment, a miniature Vesuvius erupting lava and ashes, while Moses wrung the offending liquid from Betty’s yellow drape and the magenta antimacassar. His sense of the ludicrous however overcame his wrath, “My Eye Betty!” he cried, “I near kerlapse every time I draw up my curtings on Job.”,“Oh, Billy To-morrow! You won’t have half time enough to play. You’re a regular Mexican,—always mañana!”,The dutiful husband drew from his pocket a long slip of paper and a small stubby pencil. Having a poor memory, he had formed the habit of making a note of everything his wife suggested, so that he could fulfill her wishes in future. The notes were plentiful, but they failed in some unaccountable way to prod his memory.,Clank! Clank! Clank!,Not unwillingly the boy relinquished his task. Weeding after all is thankless work. The weeds will persist in growing in spite of every discouragement.，But May Nell was not to be comforted, till that evening when she composed a wonderful ode to “The Wreck of the Fair Ellen.”，“I wonder who’ll buy this here quilt,” speculated Mrs. Wopp, as she bent over her task, “there’s shorely a great sight o’ work on it. As fer me, I aint got time to do much fancy work an’ I’d never git round to a job like this fer myself.”，“Here, let me do that,” Harold commanded; “you go and do the rest of your work. We won’t get to play in all day. The Gang coming?”“You haven’t noticed Jerusalem Crickets, yet,” Billy said impressively, anxious to distract attention from the little drama at the plate. He placed his second cat on the floor, a gaunt creature, brindled in many colors, with great scared-looking eyes. “She’s afraid of everybody. She never had any home till I brought her here, poor thing! Just kicked from door to door. And Geewhillikins, too—he was a tiny kitten put in a sack to drown out in the creek. And he was so plucky he just wiggled to shallow water and hollered for a deliverer. Of course that kind of cats don’t have manners. How could they?” Billy was a fine special pleader.

Again he patted her shoulder, and this time his voice was more kind. “You’re a brave little girl, and if I was your dad I’d be dead stuck on you. Just you don’t be afraid. I’ll bring your supper by and by.”,Mrs. Wopp surmised from the dejected appearance of the young rancher, coupled with the smiles over the footlights which she had observed with rising wrath, that trouble was brewing, and she whispered audibly to herself, “A musician’s orl right on a pianner stool, but when it comes to gittin’ up in the mornin’ an’ choppin’ wood to bile the kettle give me a farmer.” Her cogitations became louder. “I s’pose he thinks cos he has a percession of carpital letters arter his name he can git anyone fer the arskin’. When he smiled so at our Miss Gordon I could of slain him with the jawrbone of an arss.” In her championship of Howard’s interests, Mrs. Wopp became an ardent villifier of the pianist and she administered an oral castigation with feminine vigor.,“Why doesn’t the Gang come, mamma?” he asked, returning the kiss he knew was one ahead for his natal day.,Moses’ teeth chattered. It was not cold, but wash-day meant to the unhappy boy a dismal round of duties.,“That’s no giant. She isn’t bigger’n a kid. Will she let you come to play? The Gang’s coming to-morrow.”,“Then he walked back as slowly and dignifiedly as a minister,—isn’t ‘dignifiedly’ an awkward word? I wonder if it is right?”,The bun in question must have had great dynamic force, the tail of Jethro bearing evidence to the internal power generated.,CHAPTER XIX.—BETTY’S ILLNESS.,“Yes; but I’m afraid my papa’s dead, he’s been gone so long.” How she hated that word “kid.”,Now the dance was a two-step and Mrs. Wopp, who drew a hard and fast line at round dances, declaring they were instigated by the evil one, sat and looked on talking to Betty meanwhile.,“Yes. You see, she rents some of the rooms, and she says they must look extra nice on Sunday so the men won’t mosey off to the saloons.”,He was out early wheeling from house to house, where various parts of the “show” were receiving last touches. One by one he gathered each “attraction,” and herded them all to Jimmy’s big barn, where the procession was to form. Some were late, Bess for one; but Billy was not anxious about her..