Who wore

Who wore Download +128K - V5.4.1 Another time he would have gone quickly enough, for he liked work as little as the average boy, often shirked it; though when he forgot himself in his task, the joy of doing it well held him to it. But May Nell’s coming and the added expense still troubled him; and it was a resolute face he turned to his mother. “No, mamma, you shan’t get down on your marrow bones to these old floors. It’s only me that needs to go on the knees, you know.” His eyes twinkled.,St. Elmo’s face brightened with intelligence. He broke into the story to give a graphic account of how a little yellow chicken of his sister’s had got “dwownded” in the pig-trough.,“Some of the real stuff,” he requested, “just to make these folks realize they haven’t begun to live yet.”,The Queen of Sheba in gypsy dress, and her harum-scarum train buzzing with gossip and exclamation, flocked in. Bess looked magnificent in a mass of draperies that included every Oriental thing to be found in several families.,“Moses didn’t want to clip me Mar, but I thought ’twould be a ’provement to hev nice white eyebrows.” As Betty spoke one large tear rolled slowly down her cheek moistening in its course a small drop of blacking which Moses had overlooked in his cleansing operations, adding still more to the child’s grotesque appearance.，Fer our reapin’ bye ’n’ bye.”，Let us find our sweetest comfort，“It certainly is wonderful,” agreed Nell with perfect truth.“Next month when currants are ripe you shall see.”

THE silence was broken a little later by merry voices on the stairway. For several nights the girls had been gathering in May Nell’s room. Billy knew “things were doing” there by the sounds; the tap, tap of the tack hammer, added to much chatter and rustling. Now May Nell caught him by the hand and pulled him across the hall. A strange pungent fragrance like burning spice, yet not familiar, met them at the door. And inside, the dark hangings full of lurking shadows gave the room a foreign air.,“Well, the Prince will see that the glass slipper’s tied fast. He’s got no ‘Ho, minions!’ to hunt for you if you turn Cinderella again.” He stooped and fastened her tie.,Billy looked at her wonderingly for an instant. “You guess everything that troubles a fellow, don’t you? How do you do it?” He sighed deeply.,“Of course I am,” he replied promptly, with a squeeze of her hand that made her wince. “At first I was scared; I thought you must be a fairy.”,“Oh, chuck the business,” Jean said impatiently. “Can’t it wait till noon? I must go home then.”,Max furnished the milk. “I haf gif mine cow much sugar to make dot milk sweet for Pilly to-day,” he explained happily to Mrs. Bennett.,“Flash has cake, Sir Thomas cheese,” Edith explained, giving each his coveted bit. They took the morsels from her fingers, ate them delicately, and mewed once. “That’s ‘Thank you,’” Edith interpreted.,Everything was going smoothly when suddenly a catastrophe stopped short the circus, and left Moses greatly distressed. He inwardly complained that never yet was he “havin’ a good time but some orful thing happened to put a cloud over the sun.” The hens and chickens that had been pressed into the ranks of the circus performers were crowding round a swill-bucket which Moses had left tilted at a precarious angle on an upturned soap-box. In its zig-zag gyrations round the yard, the ostrich, to avoid the ubiquitous fowl, ran against the bucket and the odoriferous contents were splashed over the yellow-draped circus lady. The contents of the swill-pail trickled down Betty’s finery and dropped sadly from the pink headgear of the ostrich.,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.,Baffled, yet knowing he had expected it, he ran this way and that, peering round each corner, scanning the bare, high walls to see if by chance some window had been left unbarred. Not one less than a dozen feet from the ground! He ran back to the door, was almost tempted to shake it, yet knew that would be a foolish trick; some one might be within guarding May Nell; might at the first noise still more securely hide her,—they said there were fearfully deep and dark cellars under that house! She might come to—to some dreadful harm!,“Shade of Beelzebub! Where did you spring from?” shouted the astonished man.,She emerged from the house her hair coiled on the top of her head and decorated with a strip of shining silver from an empty biscuit tin. Thus had she seen a circus lady dressed on one never-to-be-forgotten day. Around her small body was draped a yellow silk shawl of Mrs. Wopps. Her feet were encased in a pair of Ebenezer Wopp’s reddest socks, bound on by bright green ribbon ripped from her winter hat. From her fair hair floated a white aigret made of chicken feathers hastily wired together. Moses needed no aigret as a strand of red hair stood upright from the crown of his head..