सेटिंग ओपन

सेटिंग ओपन Download +128K As Moses clattered down stairs, Mrs. Wopp continued, “There is shore a thunderstorm comin’ up to-night. ’Pears to me I heerd like a roll of drums.”,“What’s the matter, Billy? Why don’t you go and play? You surely deserve a fine holiday, my big, big son.” She put her arm around him tenderly; and he saw that she remembered. He would be thirteen to-morrow. He had been counting the days; but he thought mother and sister had been too busy to think of it. It was coming—to-morrow, Sunday! If he didn’t have a good time to-day it wouldn’t be any birthday at all.,“Mosey!”,Dim religious lights from stained glass windows shone through the church and falling on the boy chilled him to the marrow.,“O Billy, it hurts the ears of my mind to hear you say those vulgar words.” May Nell, playing “man” for the first time in her life, looked up from the “rod of grade” that she was piling deftly with a broken shingle. The color from sun and exercise added much to her beauty. She was neither blowsy nor smudged like the other children, and her lawn frock was as spotless as in the morning.，“It’s up to you now, my girl,” he panted under his breath. “The board will bend—you mustn’t be frightened. Fix your eyes on the tree—come fast.”，The Snake Charmer was silenced; for if the children had before this been tired, not one of them now but swelled with pride and fortitude at this praise from Billy.，“Never mind, Mrs. Wopp,” said Nell pleasantly, “he is a perfect gentleman in manners and he wasn’t drinking or gambling when I saw him. May I have a little more of your beautifully cooked meat?”Billy had been reeling off stanzas of his favorite “Lady of the Lake,”—“by the yard,” Mrs. Bennett said, acting it as he recited, somewhat retarding the work and endangering the dishes. Now he dropped his towel, caught up his mother and raced with her around the room. He was so strong that she was almost helpless in his grasp.

Now was Billy’s chance! The place was alone! He waited till each traveller was out of view on the curving road, then climbed up, crossed the dusty wheel tracks, and crept into the brush on the other side. Once hidden he “snooped” silently through the tangled chaparral, coming shortly to the mystery-house, so close to it that he could have looked in at the windows had they been clean enough.,“Oh ’bout the fairies an’ stars an’ lovely things that grownups know nothin’ about.”,Thy high commands shall quick be done.”,Moses began cutting make-believe tickets using the paper and scissors thrust into his hand by the capable manageress of the show.,Mrs. Newman and Nell waited after the show for the unique trio that had occupied the box but they were nowhere to be seen. Howard Eliot had whisked his companions off under a pretext of urgent business.,“But I don’t like them to do that, Billy. They ought to stay dead till the play is done. When I see them smiling I feel as if—just as I would if you made fun of me when I cried for my mama,—it takes all the true out of the play.”,As that long-suffering Mrs. Wopp wiped up the last traces of the chase she observed, “Moses’ footprints is twict as big as Betty’s, but hern is twict as many. They’ll shore git inter jist as much mischief, but Praise be! They’re both toein’ in the right d’rection.”,Balancing her voice on a very high note she popped her head through the dining-room door to speak to her husband. He was seated at the table reading “The Family Herald.” His straggling grey locks were disordered with his mental effort and formed a frieze of irregular design on his shining forehead. Mrs. Wopp’s voice, in a moment, was safe on terra firma.,“Yeh, we went to the shootin’ gallery, an’ the amuseum, an’ got inter a little square cage an’ shot away up to the top of an orful high buildin’ an’ got a sparrer’s eye view of the city.”,“Lots o’ them, St. Elmo. I seen some the other evenin’ in the moonlight. Some was dressed in green an’ silver, some in white an’ silver. They danced in an’ out among the sunflowers.”,“Not unless you wish to so much that you will not do anything else, Billy. The world needs preachers of the right kind sadly; and the right kind take up the calling reverently, though they know it will bring them small worldly return and much toil.”,“Only little girls see fairies ever,” was the reply..