Hearts Highway

Hearts Highway Download +88K “Yeh,” scoffed Moses, “this here turnin’ machines every Monday makes me sick. I aint got no liver left to be cheerful.”,Max was the first to be quite ready with his exhibit. It was a queer creature that one gradually discovered to be some sort of a bird; though such a one had never before been seen on land or sea. Max had arrayed his mother’s big white gander for the occasion. A turkey-tail fan made a huge breastplate, if one can imagine a breastplate of feathers. All the long-tailed roosters that had been killed in town for months, one would guess, had contributed to the coat of sprawling feathers that was tied over the body of the bird. And no one knew by what magic the boy had coaxed some one to lend him the magnificent peacock plumes that rose high above the little wiggling goose tail.,“Don’t you remember the first day I went to school, he took me between his knees,—I was a little kid then,—and said, ‘Billy, if I[133] know that you ever jump on a boy first to fight him, I’ll lick you. And if another boy jumps on you first, and you don’t fight back, no matter how big he is, I’ll lick you then.’”,“Yer a reglar Mis’ Barnum,” he praised. Whereupon the enterprising program-maker began to devise new and more wonderful side-shows for her admirer.,“This here dorg is clean tuckered out,” she declared, “ef he swallered a green pea, you’d see it goin’ down orl the way.”，“Wisht I had two bits.”，Relieved, yet with his nerves quivering Billy plunged into the deep woods of the higher altitudes. The air was unusually hot and stifling, and his eyes watered. “Fire in the woods somewhere,” he murmured, recognizing the odor of smoke.，The dance was held in a new barn of which the floor was especially good. Indeed the young people of the family had seen to that. Unfortunately the stable end of the building was already in use and this proved to be somewhat inconvenient. During the festivities of the evening one delicate lady fainted from excitement and overpowering stable odors. She speedily revived, however, on being carried into the fresh air and soused with a bucket of cold water. The building was illuminated with lanterns and an occasional oil lamp. Benches were ranged along the walls. The crowd was large and as usual at these affairs men predominated in numbers. The dances were mostly square ones and when a husky caller-off became hoarse and exhausted with shouting, another took his place. He usually stood at one end of the building beside the fiddler.Jimmy had the trick ponies and the trained dogs. Teaching them was the chief joy of his life. What if there were only two ponies, and their spots were painted on? And what if the children had seen all the tricks over and over again? They were good as new each time. Besides, the ponies’ one brand-new trick, when at the crack of a whip they stood on their hind feet in unison, was so effective that it frightened May Nell. She saw it first in the barn; and when their shod hoofs came down she thought they would crash right through the floor.

“Come home to dinner with me, Mr. Zalhambra, you’ll p’raps find some folks there that will appreciate the dope you hand out.”,“I took a stick of kindling from the kitchen and crept out to chase the thief away; but just then Flash trotted around the corner of the house. He’s been on the front lawn all the morning watching for gophers; wouldn’t come when we called him.”,Suddenly, all heads were raised and a sigh of satisfaction escaped Mrs. Wopp’s lips.,“You romp!” came the disgusted voice once more. “You’d better cut your hair, and your skirts, and be a child again.”,Which last order was the signal for a giddy frolic. Finally, “Everybody promenade, you know where,” and the dancers joined the spectators on the benches.,Awakened to the fact of her son’s existence and perhaps as an antidote to her unusual display of sentiment, Mrs. Wopp spoke rather sharply. “Moses, time you an’ Betty was in bed. You won’t want to git up in the mornin’ an’ milk the cows.” Later left alone in the lower part of the house she stood arms akimbo in the middle of the kitchen gazing at the door through which Nell Gordon had just departed. Shaking her head she said mysteriously, “I kalkerlate as how things is a-settin’ in that way.”,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.,But May Nell’s ambition was boundless. “We can do mathematics work, too. I can multiply, and divide, and other things beside, I can do; I’ll just be your paper and pencil.”,“Ugh! Confound their impudence, I’ll make them listen yet to something else than rag.”,“I suppose you have a large farm, Mr. Wopp,” said Nell Gordon.,“When I do my dishes, Mar, can I work in the garding, too?” inquired Betty.,“But your school, my child! You must be educated; you—”.