Wolf puzzles

Wolf puzzles Earn money by referring friends “Wisht I had two bits.”,To his mother and sister Billy seemed changed. He stuck closer to his books. His teacher told them the boy stood at the head of his class. “Jimmy Dorr may be a rival if he feels like work, which isn’t probable. Jean’s accident last year put her behind, otherwise the boys would have to work much harder if either excelled her.” Yet even these welcome words did not account for some things the mother quietly observed; Billy’s growing promptness, better attention, and memory for matters outside of play. He was more silent, too; and there was less hammering and whistling in the shop.,“You carnt spell so smart anyways,” he ventured. Betty turned her piquant nose up at him and suddenly bounced up from the table.,He swung his book-strap in greeting to his mother while rolling more slowly up the rose-bordered path to the veranda. He thought his mother’s face looked tired; but the smile there welcomed him warmly, and he forgot the tired look with her first words.,Finally, Ebenezer Wopp’s musings, which had been gathering force as he worked, burst into speech. For a quiet man he became almost oratorical. Then he fell to soliloquizing audibly.，“Doubtless it is incorporated in the language of some foreign people,” conceded Mrs. Mifsud, languidly.，“No, no! Don’t, mother! I’ll run away! I’ll—” He groaned and left his sentence unfinished.，“Never mind, son; we expected to take some one.”The solid rock of the mountain had been cut away from the rear of the house to form a natural, paved court. At the top was a small chicken coop, its wall flush with the wall of rock; and near it grew an oak sapling not larger than Billy’s arm.

“Why not, I’d like to know? Isn’t this my shack? And shall I let a kid burn up?”,“All over the house does she put them?” the child asked after she had snipped a fragrant heap.,Mrs. Wopp’s suggestion had an immediate and salutary effect on the boy.,Perhaps the fact that Mannel came from a home where Russian was the language in use and that he knew little English, accounted for his abnormal seriousness during school hours. He could not be absolutely sure what was being said or what might be done to him. Perhaps some cruel elder brother, before Mannel had even started his education, had explained to him in voluble Russian that dreadful pains and penalties were likely to follow the slightest deviation from the paths of virtue. Certain it is that he kept a close watch on the teacher, and that none of her slightest movements escaped him. Though his general appearance might cause mirth in others, he himself seldom smiled. Day by day he sat in his little front seat grasping slate and pencil in chubby hands, gazing earnestly at the sums on the blackboard as he copied them down. Afterward he worked these with fitting solemnity. To him they appeared to be of the greatest difficulty and of national importance. Sometimes he wrote endless rows of letters on his slate. Sometimes he made nondescript figures out of plasticine or drew patterns on his slate or counted beads. At other times, grievous to relate, when he felt sure the teacher was otherwise engaged and could not possibly see him, he drew fierce triangular cats with four or perhaps five stiff, geometrical legs and rampant tails.,Mrs. Bennett put down the pan of batter-cake dough and gave him his good-morning kiss. His head was level with hers. “Thank you, my big boy. Mother will soon have a man to look to. Go in and get your breakfast; you must be nearly famished.”,Thus interrogated, the boy who had caught but one fleeting word of the sentence, reddened, and shuffling his feet, said he’d “often rode a wild cayuse.”,In a few minutes Moses again touched the man’s elbow, “Say, Mister, I come to arsk yer parding fer larfin’ at yer, but, Glory be! I couldn’t help it. My curtings never rolled up on a funnier sight.”,As he climbed down, reaching from branch to branch, very cautiously, he knew not why, he was suddenly halted by the sound of low voices. Carefully he crept nearer. A tiny hut came in view, with an open door, and the glint of fire within. A man was standing outside, smoking a pipe, yet wearing hat, coat, and gloves, as if about to set off. He was very large. His clothes were new and showy, too bright in color, too large of check. His watch chain was massive; the big diamond out of place with his colored shirt; and the soft silk handkerchief he drew from his pocket was a brilliant red, and the largest Billy had ever seen. Another man, in the doorway, was smaller and bareheaded. His sleeves were rolled up, and his hands were stained.,In his anticipation of the Sunday afternoon treat in store for him, Moses dreamed all that night of little dark-skinned men running round after him with bowls of rice and jabbing him with chop-sticks.,He woke early the next morning. This was rare for him; he usually slept like a bear in midwinter. Perhaps the creaking of the windmill all through the night made his slumber light. Another noise had disturbed him, the sewing machine. Its whirr had come up to him from the open window of the living-room. He knew mother and sister were sewing hard, that on the morrow the poor little stranger might be suitably clad. He had brought upon them this extra work! And this was only the beginning. If the child’s mother was not found they must buy clothes as well as food; and this would take a lot of his sister’s money.,“Their knifes bin too dull, and she must quick be done,” Max apologized to Billy on his inspection trips.,CHAPTER XV.—MERRY-MAKING IN THE HAY-LOFT..