Dream11

Dream11 Electronics online - V1.4.7 Still, since Billy had broken his resolution of silence, he was feverishly eager to talk. His thoughts were erratic, now in the present, again flying back to the past. “O mother, you should be lickin’ me ’nstead of petting me!” he broke out passionately.,“But, Mose, you shorely didn’t fergit a sorft answer turneth away wrarth?”,Though these and similar remarks seemed rather personal no resentment was felt by anybody.,“Last November.”,Mrs. Newman and Nell waited after the show for the unique trio that had occupied the box but they were nowhere to be seen. Howard Eliot had whisked his companions off under a pretext of urgent business.，May Nell looked at him with wide eyes. She saw that he was not a vineyard workman, his clothes were too fine. She did not see them in detail, the large checked trousers, the shiny gloves, and the big diamond, but she felt instinctively that one who could dress so was different from the men she knew. And the look in his face made her cold.，Upstairs the lightning filled Betty’s room with a weird intermittent radiance. The child had become increasingly drowsy and asked Howard to sing her to sleep.，“Never min’, Pete, an’ thank you anyways, but sence the lesson’s a hull lot about the sea, I’ll jist write with blue chork.”The blandishments of soda water fountains, candy stores, and other boyish temptations, found no victim in Billy. But if Mr. Cooper, the tinshop man, had driven hard bargains he would have bankrupted the boy. As it was his weekly allowance suffered in spite of Mr. Cooper’s generosity and Billy’s free access to a rich scrap heap at the rear of the big shop where everything, one would say, in tin and iron was made, from well pipe, tanks, and boilers, to tin wings for Edith’s fairies in the opera.

CHAPTER XVII BILLY TO-DAY,The theatre was entirely darkened long enough to arrange the grand piano. The pianist approached the instrument to the plaudits of the crowded house. The insult to his audience in the afternoon had succeeded in spreading his fame and a packed house greeted his evening performance. He turned and gazed intently toward the audience. He caught Nell’s glance, who sat near the front as he had wished, and he smiled an acknowledgment of her presence.,All the people came out of their shops and offices and clapped generously. A light breeze floated out the flags, and made the gold fringe on the Snake Charmer’s cage wave and look rich and foreign. The band outdid itself; and as the forward end of the procession turned out of the street, a great cheer began behind them, grew and swelled, till even the youngest child knew “folks liked the circus.”,The loft in the barn had been swept and garnished by Mr. Wopp for Betty’s moving picture show, and thither, after the preliminary how-d’you-do’s were over, she led her eager audience. Her head was held at the exact angle for ascending the ladder to perform the imposing duties of moving picture operator, and her foot was on the first rung when she suddenly thought of the collection box for the carrots the children were carrying.,“But s’pose you change yer name, Miss Gordon,” whispered Betty slyly. “Then nobody’d know ’twas you.”,Billy heeded no prize-ring rules, no boys’ traditions of fair play. Every savage instinct inherited from far-distant ancestors and sleeping till to-day, rose, conquered the human in him, for the moment made him brutish. And the sobs of the little girls were as whips of fire.,“Take her in,” Billy gasped. “They stole her; they’re after—save her—hurry—” He could say no more, but suddenly collapsed and sank to the ground; and the last sight he remembered was the dark Italian at the house corner, talking fast, with one hand in a sling, the other waving a knife threateningly.,IT was a gray, cold day, unusual for May, the kind of day that accords with ill-nature. It reminded Billy of the incident of the opera when Rain and Storm, driven by his own insistence, had blown in on the stage quite out of season, and dragged off with them the remnants of winter. For the first Sunday since May Nell’s coming he took his wheel after dinner and went off alone. He was in accord with the sullen sky and air. In the morning he had answered his mother angrily; because Bouncer wished to play instead of coming through the gate when called, Billy had slammed it on his tail, knowing well that in a happier mood he would have been more careful.,He found Evelyn on her knees before a hot fire, bravely trying to hold level one of the several pots that were sizzling there. Her drooping hair smothered her small hot face, and perspiration stood like dew on her anxious little upper lip.,Lastly came Moses’ turn to pay the admission fee, and with a shame-faced expression he dropped several silver coins into the box held in Betty’s hand. Her face was a study in feminine triumph as Moses mumbled, “I aint got no carrots, so here’s my pay to git in ter yer little ole show.”,“They’re a regular Damon and Pythias, aren’t they? And we’ll have Flash for the Polar Bear, in the circus, and Tom for the Royal Bengal Tiger, the baby tiger, you know.”,Cautiously he crept nearer the door, stopping at each step to listen, to look again at the worker above. He was at the very corner of the house when voices sounded from within. He started, his breath coming quicker. He caught no words, but knew by the “ginger” in the tones that the speakers were angry. Shuffling steps came up the stairway and turned toward the rear..