Smoking gun meaning origin

Smoking gun meaning origin Earn money by referring friends “Jethro barks with his mouth an’ smiles with his tail,” said Betty.,“Shade of Beelzebub! Where did you spring from?” shouted the astonished man.,To-day she was happy. It had fallen to her to general this great feast that Billy’s mates had planned for the celebration of his birthday. All had contributed. Not only the girls had cooked—Jean had baked a big cake, Jackson had made the candy, and Jimmy and George had sneaked up from the “Front,” and set up the long table in the arbor.,As Clarence depicted the terror of the father, lest his arrow miss the mark and kill his son, Moses rose from his chair in breathless suspense. However, the arrow cleft the apple and left the boy unscathed, and the relieved Moses, sinking back in his chair, recovered himself sufficiently to murmur “What an orful chanct fer anyone ter take!”,And Billy did not think of it as strange till Buzz’s grandmother called from behind the window curtain, “Delia, you surely won’t traipse through town with that crowd! How you will look!”，“You’re a brilliant youth Moses,” smiled Howard approvingly, “and sure to get on in life. You don’t appreciate your own cleverness half as much as I do.”，“Break it,—not now; when I tell you.”，“Sometimes yes an’ orftener no. I’d hate to leave Betty an’ the pinto.”Billy at work or at play was so absorbed that it was hard for him to measure time; and he had a queer notion that it was some other intelligence beside his own will that reminded him, often too late, of duties waiting. This he named Betsey; and among the children Betsey came to stand for Billy’s conscience.

Billy beamed upon her. He adored her, as did every child in town.,If he had been older he would have said he had “the blues.” Yet probably he would not have known that his mental—and physical—condition was a natural result of the long strain of previous weeks. All the children felt it. That morning the cousins, Clarence and Harry, who loved each other dearly, had come to blows in the Sunday School room before the teachers arrived, over the question of which one of them should marry Miss Edith. Clarence received a bloody scratch the full length of his palm from Harry’s Band of Mercy pin; while the careful parting disappeared from his own hair, and a red splotch marred the whiteness of his wide collar. No one can tell what further calamity might have happened had not the Twins opportunely arrived and questioned of the quarrel.,Ebenezer Wopp was the last silent word in patient masculinity, but his face, becoming darker with his work, would lead an onlooker to believe that sinister thoughts were struggling to find expression.,“Mar,” he demanded hastily, “more marshed turnips, please.”,When the two arrived, Nell Gordon was sitting with the sick child and crooning softly to her. Howard Eliot drew near, accidentally touching the firm round arm of Nell as he did so.,“But you may have broken bones—be seriously injured.”,He looked at the beaming faces, at the beautiful table with Jean’s great pagoda cake in the centre, the dates, 1893-1906, in evergreen; at the flowers everywhere; at the dishes,—they usually ate from vine leaves at their out-of-door feasts,—at the paper napkins folded fantastically and hovering over the table like gay butterflies. His eloquent face told his surprise, his gratitude, his delight. He opened his mouth to speak some fitting word, but it wouldn’t come. He tried again, for he felt the occasion called for something formally appreciative. But only a whimsical idea flitted into his mind; and he sang back—,The Wopps, father and son, attacked the load of hay with such vigor that it was quickly disposed of. Just as the last forkful was being pitched over the corral fence, the boy looking up saw a vehicle approaching.,“Wisht I hed a chance to holler into one of them brass dinner-horns, too,” he grumbled.,“Mar said she’d like to see the sights too onct again,” said Moses, watching with the air of an investigator the wart on his hand grow pale as he punched it with his finger, “It seemed so lonesome-like soon as Betty an’ Miss Gordon left, Mar says, says she, ‘Let’s go plum to Calgary ourselves’.” This diplomatic stroke crowned Moses’ arguments and his case was won.,“Oh, Billy To-morrow! You won’t have half time enough to play. You’re a regular Mexican,—always mañana!”,Artful Bess! Billy had treated it all as a huge joke; but now May Nell’s depression, the unfamiliar sound of his right name, the dim room with its shadows and half-suffocating odors,—all conspired to send a sober Billy into the circle of lurid light that came from the two lamps gleaming on either side of dark Bess like angry eyes..