5 Wild Wild Peppers

5 Wild Wild Peppers But they speedily fell, when she found herself compelled to contemplate Hardly were they over the threshhold, before a short, stocky, middle-aged man came up to them. He rushed up to Whitney with outstretched hands and said, “I certainly am glad to see you, Whitney. Ted Adams has been gone two weeks and I have been expecting you almost any day. I couldn’t get down to meet you at the station, as they needed me over at the spillway. Little matter of extra shoring. It’s all right now.”,So it seemed to the boy, as from the brow of a hill he watched the dawn-haze drift toward the newly-open sun-gates of the eastern sky; for autumn always brought a feeling of sadness to Billy. He missed the twitter of the birds, the thousand and one notes of the wild things he loved and which always passed out and away from his world with the summer. The first hoar frost had come; soon the leaves would turn golden and crimson, the fern-clumps crumple and wither into sere, dead, scentless things. Then with shortening days and darkening skies those leaves and plants would sag to earth and the gaunt arms of the bare trees would lift empty nests toward snow-spitting skies.,And so, as there is nobody else exactly suitable in town, it all simmers down to one or the other of these or Alfred. In my heart I knew that I couldn't hesitate a minute—and in the flash of a second I decided. Of course I love Alfred, and I'll take him gladly and be the wife he has waited for all these six lonely years. I'll make everything up to him, if I have to diet to keep thin for him the rest of my life. Probably I shall have that very thing to do, and I get weak at the idea. Before I burn this book I'll have to copy it all out and be chained to it for life. At the thought my heart dropped like a sinker to my toes; but I hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself how Alfred would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin remade into a Rene wonder. However, my old heart would show a strange propensity for sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were even coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the first water.,"Again I fail to understand," says Paul; but his very lips grow livid. "Perhaps for the second time, and with the same delicacy you used at first, you will condescend to explain.",Patricia dropped back instantly to her usual manner.，His lordship bowed: upon which the Admiral and Captain Acton paid him the homage of their hats in a well-accentuated flourish of courtesy, for not only was Lord Garlies a brave man and a fine seaman: he was the son of an earl and heir to a title which made a[Pg 426] claim that in its way was not less irresistible in 1805 than it may be found a hundred years later.，"Nothing. Not all the talking in the wide world," with a brilliant blush, but with steady earnest eyes.，“I’m the Royal Egyptian Fortune Teller!” Bess announced, in a deep voice. “This is my desert tent. I shall reveal the past, present, and future to those only whom my favor shall designate. Slaves, the lamps!”With a bound, Billy was beside him, and peering through the rushes into the tiny bay in which they kept their boat.

“I’m—crossing—Niagara Falls—on—a—tight-rope,” said Johnny.,"Well now, I can't see why a dozen wouldn't keep as well as three," returned the keeper, as he pulled the punt high on shore.,Saying this he turned the key, and was rushing on, but the door refused to yield; it shook under his hands, and seemed as if partially held by some person on the other side. The marquis was surprized, and made several efforts to move it, without effect. He then ordered his servants to burst it open, but, shrinking back with one accord, they cried, 'For God's sake, my lord, go no farther; we are satisfied here are no ghosts, only let us get back.',But before they reach the hall door Geoffrey feels it his duty to bestow upon them a word or two of warning.,"The Phœbe.",There they were, all of them, down in the syringa arbor—Olea the cook, Lisa the nursemaid, Asta, Andrea, and Dagny.,Then, his master still remaining blind to the wealth of treasure disclosed to him, Croaker spread his wings and sailed away over the pine-tops. Billy, despair in his heart, followed. All fear of the supernatural was gone from him now, crowded out by bitter disappointment at his failure to find the hidden gold. He passed close beside the haunted house without so much as a thought of the ghost of the man who had owned it and on through the silent pines and shadowy, grave-yard silence.,"How melancholy!" says Mona, with a nearer approach to brightness than she has shown all day.,"Yes, of course," she says, dejectedly. A cloud seems to have fallen upon her happy hour. "When did you hear that—that last singer?" she asks, in a subdued voice.,"Ah! now, I have disturbed you," says Mrs. Geoffrey, pathetically, to whom lovers are a rare delight and a sacred study. "How stupid of me! Sure you needn't have come out, when you knew it was only me. And of course he wants you, poor dear fellow. I thought you were in the small drawing-room, or I shouldn't have called you at all.","Well, even that awful misfortune might be survived. We can live in our own home 'at ease,' as the old song says, until she comes to her senses. By and by, do you know you have never asked me about your future home,—my own place, Leighton Hall? and yet it is rather well worth asking about, because, though small, it is one of the oldest and prettiest places in the county.","And do say it is like it," says Mona, entreatingly..