Patti Dragon Tiger

Patti Dragon Tiger Register and receive 188K The broad shaft of sunlight that flooded the dining-room where Nell Gordon sat was suddenly darkened. Looking up she saw the tall straight figure of Howard Eliot at the doorway.,On Moses Wopp devolved the responsibility of driving the ladies of the household over the two miles of prairie lying between the Wopp ranch and that of Mrs. Mifsud. Betty, too, was going. The Ladies’ Aid did not meet every day, nor had it always on hand the alluring business of an autograph quilt, on which flourished in outlined boldness the name of every man, woman and child in the district and many out of it.,Every morning during the summer a bunch of morning-glories, wet with dew, adorned the breakfast table. Blue and pink and white, they seemed the very spirit of morning freshness and sweetness.,Presently Clarence caught up to him and bore him down a side street lest further attempts at apology should cause him to again accost the irate stranger.,Howard gravely did as ordered.，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.，A gleeful yell greeted his paraphrase. While they ate it all came out, how they had planned and executed. Harold had peas and strawberries hidden in his mysterious basket, freshly gathered by his own hands that morning. George and Jimmy had furnished and dressed the chickens, and the girls had roasted them—with a little supervision from Mrs. Bennett—in the Yukon camping stove that belonged to Harry’s mother. Bess had given the dishes, blue and white enamel, strong as well as good to the eye, and ready for many another frolic.，“His tail’s druv in too far fer to waggle much though,” returned Moses eyeing the diminutive stump.“What yer whistlin’ so mournful like?” queried his mother, “makes me think of funerals an’ sich like; jist come in an’ help yer par with the stove-pipes, mebbe that’ll cheer you up.”

Vina was no exception. Ball games, church collections, children’s mite societies, girls sewing, boys running errands, each and all helped with the relief work.,“Yes, right now.” He stepped nearer, and Bouncer growled and bristled.,Billy was the sun, dressed in a pale yellow tunic, and crowned with a fillet of sun-bursts cut from gilt paper. He came but a little way on the stage from the south for each of his short solos; and the others pelted him back. Especially did he hide from Rain behind Cloud, a tall girl in a small ocean of gray tulle.,“Won’t you dive Elmo some wed ones, too?” he pleaded.,“He ran up and touched noses with Tom like a Feegee Islander,—are they the people that touch noses for ‘How do you do?’”,“Now Moses,” she called at the end of the third verse, “git the water for the rinsin’.” The clanking lessened and slowly died down to a complaining rumble. It might have been some monster suffering from indigestion.,“Put a nose an’ eyes over his own planner an’ you’d think there’s the man hisself,” flung back Mrs. Wopp.,Through the open door could be heard the strains of “Pull for the shore” sung with heart and soul by the intermediate class, and to that lively air Moses made for the exit as expeditiously as his sodden garments would allow.,The service began and was proceeding with its accustomed smoothness and decorum when a most unseemly interruption occurred. Maria Mifsud had long entertained suspicions that all was not well with the interior of the organ. Lately a few of the notes had refused to make a sound, and to-day there seemed to be more of these delinquents than ever. While Mr. Bliggins was collecting the offering Maria began to play a voluntary carefully practised beforehand. She had fairly launched into “One Sweetly Solemn Thought” when suddenly she discerned peering curiously at her through one of the round holes which adorn the front of the instrument the small bright eye of a mouse. The intruder was apparently quite calm and self-possessed. Not so Maria. With a piercing shriek she jumped from the organ stool and rushing to the back of the church leaped wildly to the seat beside her scandalized and uncomprehending mother. Almost at the same moment the offending mouse scampered down the internal anatomy of the organ and gained freedom through an exit beside the pedals. Mr. Wells turned crimson and stood on one foot. Most of the ladies of the congregation drew their feet up on the seat beside them. The mouse ran furiously along the sacred aisles of the church.,“Orl right, you rascalashus coaxer, an’ go make some tea an’ fetch some crackers an’ cheese an’ we’ll orl hev a bite.”,“Oh, my conscience! That isn’t any matter. All the grandest actors have the dying parts; and they die gloriously; and the audience claps and claps and claps; and the curtain goes up, and they all come out alive again and bow and smile; and you eat some candy and don’t cry any more.”,“Surely Billy has earned it, Mrs. Bennett,” Mr. Smith urged..