Blue Slot

Blue Slot Ten years of prestige “Please don’t call Jimmy ‘Sour,’” May Nell pleaded. “He’s big and dark and splendid; and his other name is going to be Roderick Dhu; and he’ll be kind to all weak things, and fight for the Douglases, and for the Fair Ellen.” She waved her hand toward the steamboat.,It took some time to focus her intellect on the proper placing of mirthful youngsters, but at last, after singing “Like a little candle burning in the night,” all were in readiness to imbibe biblical learning.,“O Billy, it hurts the ears of my mind to hear you say those vulgar words.” May Nell, playing “man” for the first time in her life, looked up from the “rod of grade” that she was piling deftly with a broken shingle. The color from sun and exercise added much to her beauty. She was neither blowsy nor smudged like the other children, and her lawn frock was as spotless as in the morning.,The unstinted praise of the children in the operetta, the aftermath of buzz about the “show” at school,—this excitement lasted for a day or so; but on this lowering Sunday tired nature put in a claim for her own; and relaxed nerves were irritably near the surface.,Mrs. Wopp’s face assumed a forgiving air as she accepted this defence. Then began that portion of the story that leads up to the tragic culmination.，Clank! Clank! Clank!，All was now ready for firing. “She” was to be run by oil. They took her out through the double doors, both swung wide for the first time in many weeks. It was all the boys could do to carry the heavy thing, though they went quite steadily across the vegetable garden, not without some damage to spring lettuce and summer corn, however; but on the steep, uneven slope below, the Fair Ellen came almost to grief.，Billy turned the bulky papers over and over as if to gather some hint of their meaning from fold and stiffness. “What is it, Mr. Smith?” he asked wonderingly.Along the ridge of soft sand left by receding waters Billy let his first contract to Harold, who immediately marshalled the “kindergarten” with their broken fire shovels, kitchen spoons, what not, and set them to digging briskly. “Straight to the line, mind you,” he sang out from time to time, as he set his pins along the line the “engineers had run.” Max was superintendent of telegraph construction; and Charley Strong, “the Strong Man,” and Jackson contracted for the tunnel. They were to start from each side, meet exactly in the middle in sixty days,—a minute stood for a day,—or pay five million dollars fine. And over all Billy kept a watchful eye, cast the glamour of his eager spirit.

Vainly he explored the corridors seeking a tap for water to bathe his bleeding nose. The more doors Moses went through the more doors seemed to beckon him on through their portals. He reflected that if he had only had the good fortune to bring the key of the pantry door at home, that large piece of cold steel applied to the back of his neck would speedily have stopped the sanguinary flood.,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.,“Why, Betty?”,He winced with pain, reeled, and would have fallen but for the other’s sustaining hand.,“No worse ’n you, I reckon,” was the rueful response. Billy’s appearance justified Jimmy’s speech; for freckles were standing out large and ghastly from one or two very white spots on the younger boy’s battered face. “Can you get home alone?”,“I’m going to work as soon ’s school’s out; it’s for you and May Nell, too, you know.”,“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.”,“Murder! Murder!” he shouted with all his strength; and his boy’s voice reached far up and down the lonely distances.,Billy knew by sight the two Italians who lived there, brothers yet enemies. Each dwelt by himself in a corner of the great building.Each cultivated alone his share of the straggling vineyard on the heights above, too steep and rocky for a plough; though the lush acres on the river bottom went fallow. If either overstepped his bounds they fought. Billy had seen one of these encounters; and the fierce fire in their dark faces, the passion in the foreign words they spoke,—oaths the boy felt they must be,—sent him flying home, tinged his dreams for many a night.,“None of your nonsense,” replied the long-limbed pedestrian, his thankyou’s cut short by Moses’ cheerfulness.,“Mith Wopp, had Jonah any little girlth or boyth at home?”,“Why, Billy? I don’t believe in whipping unless all else fails.”.