El Camino

El Camino download +88k “Holy Smoke! Be this the River Jording I’ve come ter?”,Services were over before she found time to be lonely. Dinner passed happily. The cats stayed quietly in their chair till dessert, when they came, one on either side of Edith, and stood with their forepaws on the table, their heads and shoulders above it.,“Ef it hadn’t been fer Mosey, St. Elmo might of been lorst yet,” remarked Betty, gazing reflectively into the fire. “Ef he was goin’ walkin’ on till he found Joner, he’d of been gone a long while.”,“Yes indeed,” laughed Mrs. Wopp, who was just then entering the room with a platter of bacon and eggs, “Betty’s our mornin’-glory girl shore nuff, she’s first up in the mornin’, she’s a glory little urchin an’ she’s our little girl to stay.”,“La now! An’ why do you say that, my dear?” inquired Mrs. Wopp. “Set up straight, Moses, yer back looks like you was packin’ a sack of pertaters.”，“Don’t sit there wool-gatherin’ anyways, Mose, or the moths’ll nest in yer head. Ef you carn’t sing in toon, you kin bring up a cup of tea fer Miss Gordon an’ Mr. Eliot, an’ don’t fergit Betty an’ yer Mar.”，“Yes, when you and sister turn gray getting it out of me. No, I’m going to do real work that will earn money; and I’m going to take this never-get-enough grub-basket of mine to a table where my own hands have earned the grub.”，Thus interrogated, the boy who had caught but one fleeting word of the sentence, reddened, and shuffling his feet, said he’d “often rode a wild cayuse.”CHAPTER II.—CONCERNING BETTY.

The pianist took a long look at Nell who had been visibly affected by his playing. Misgivings that date back to Eden were leaping into life in his breast. He had been in love more times than he could count, but here was the girl after all. He began a Scherzo of his own composition. Youth gathering flowers at the open mouth of a volcano. The melody was born to live forever. He was a genius. Now Nell knew it and her soul worshipped genius. Howard Eliot was far from her thoughts as she listened to the enchanting chain of melodies that poured forth.,All heads bowed as the compliant master of the house, with thin nervous hands outspread and in a voice quavering with piety, responded to this request. Moses of the freckled face and pale blue eyes, kept one eye open as grace was being said, in order to scan the bounteous display on the table. Furtively he chose the largest bun on the plate that was placed close to Betty, his little foster-sister. To annex the most corpulent pickle would require some slight manœuvring, but he felt sure it could be managed.,But not that night nor for days after did Billy look at his books. The second morning the fever was still present, and he told his mother he was “all over red goose flesh.”,“Did you forget their breakfast, Billy?” the child questioned earnestly.,“I guess so. What else?”,Betty playfully thrust a small forefinger into one of the fresh biscuits on the table and bore it, impaled on the rosy weapon, triumphantly to her plate. This was for the amusement of Moses, but instead of laughing as he was expected to do, he eyed his little sister with assumed indifference.,“Why, they know what you say—mind!” May Nell exclaimed, admiringly.,But Mrs. Bennett wasn’t blaming any one; she didn’t really know what the excitement was all about.,The heat and smoke increased alarmingly as they went on, the man puffing at the boy’s pace. In and out, occasionally doubling and returning but never losing altitude, Billy crashed on. His slender body slipped through underbrush by way of small apertures that would not admit the man’s greater bulk; he had to break his way. The boy, also accustomed to running, climbing, had the advantage of better breath; though the other could not, Billy still held his mouth shut against the suffocating smoke, kept his smarting eyes partly closed.,“Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?,In his anticipation of the Sunday afternoon treat in store for him, Moses dreamed all that night of little dark-skinned men running round after him with bowls of rice and jabbing him with chop-sticks.,Jean’s face fell, and she didn’t look at Billy when she spoke. “My mother says I mustn’t wrestle any more.”.