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Playson logo with its long history of development, remains one of the leading bookmakers, reflecting the prestige and quality it offers. ⭐️ CHAPTER III.—A DAY AT SCHOOL.,The child was “boiling inside,” yet she believed Bouncer’s life depended on her obedience. And anyway, Billy would come in a minute. Oh, why wasn’t he there now!,“We left him by the creek, Ma, playing in the sand,” was the reply. “When Betty and me tried to make him come in he slapped us.”,“I’d love to, Billy,” Mrs. Lancaster whispered; “I’ve never liked being grown up.”,“Howard Eliot may larf, but I think these writin’s is real clever.” Mrs. Wopp grew thoughtful, “Moses’ Aunt Lucindy’s cousin, by marriage, had talents fer literatoor. But the pore girl married an undertaker an’ she writ no more.”，Thus adjured, Howard began, while Mrs. Wopp leaned back in her chair rocking vigorously.，“My stomach’s crying so I’ll have to eat one more sandwich, Bouncer. It’s a shame when Billy isn’t here. I’ll give you half, old dog.”，All this time Mrs. Wopp ran breathlessly up and down stairs attending to the feverish child. Even wash-day was postponed, but the terrors of that dread event would never again appal Moses, he felt sure, if only Betty got well. Ebenezer Wopp was distracted and neglected to take his usual number of notes.“As the door creaketh on his hinges, so the slugger turneth on his bed.” Liza Wopp’s voice was compelling in its significance. Through the rose-lit dreams of Moses, the sound and the awful words were like the threatenings of an approaching storm.

“You hitch Jethro to yer ole ’xpress waggon, ’n I’ll hitch Job to a prune-box with spool-wheels,” suggested Betty.,“You are not a baby, my son; you’ll soon be a man, and it’s time you did your own thinking. Don’t be late for dinner.”,“Mudgie, Mudgie, come to Elmo.”,He winced with pain, reeled, and would have fallen but for the other’s sustaining hand.,All this time Mr. Wopp had carried and brushed and shaken stove-pipe lengths until his face and bald head resembled a latticework trellis. Only one length remained to be operated on before proceeding to the upper storey, where the stove-pipe continued its tortuous way to the chimney, warming sundry rooms on its beneficent course.,Mrs. Wopp drew the green curtains together and turned to the smallest girl in the class.,Bess arrived at last. A gorgeous affair was her chariot, the foundation being Mr. Prettyman’s spring wagon. Bess, with some borrowings, Charley’s help, and her own quick invention, had made a very good imitation of a circus wagon. Charley, the Strong Man, held the reins over old Dom Pedro, the horse she loved, that had once been a racer. She had discovered some very real looking, jointed snakes that wriggled and curved in a manner startlingly serpentine; while tremendous boa constrictors, cut from old circus posters, were disposed about the cage in alarmingly lifelike positions.,“There’s nary a piece left, that greedy boy et it orl up.”,Mrs. Bennett was setting the table. She put down a pile of plates, and a new anxiety came into her careworn face. “A child? I told Mr. Patton I couldn’t take one.”,“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.”,Nero, nonchalantly fiddling a trifling accompaniment to the burning of Rome, had nothing on Moses, as that blithe-hearted boy whistled a joyous, albeit unmelodious, lilt to the devastation of Betty’s picture show box.,“Oh ’bout the fairies an’ stars an’ lovely things that grownups know nothin’ about.”.