bethard and sons

bethard and sons Register and receive 188k “Jevver see sich a useless boy? Been learnin’ spellin’s orl day, I ’xpect.”,He placed them before him, Rain and Storm, took his great golden horn of plenty under his arm, stepped on the wheeled board, signalled the super, and rolled on, driving the crouching pair in front of him with pelting showers’ of rose leaves, and landing at his station just as the chorus filed in. The gray pair threw their shrouding mantles over the truck, and still crouching pushed it out of sight; and the spectators, believing they had laughed in the wrong place, cheered vociferously, and never knew the difference.,If he had been older he would have said he had “the blues.” Yet probably he would not have known that his mental—and physical—condition was a natural result of the long strain of previous weeks. All the children felt it. That morning the cousins, Clarence and Harry, who loved each other dearly, had come to blows in the Sunday School room before the teachers arrived, over the question of which one of them should marry Miss Edith. Clarence received a bloody scratch the full length of his palm from Harry’s Band of Mercy pin; while the careful parting disappeared from his own hair, and a red splotch marred the whiteness of his wide collar. No one can tell what further calamity might have happened had not the Twins opportunely arrived and questioned of the quarrel.,They tied the horses, and once hidden from the road, shed every superfluous garment. Billy was quite ashamed of the chill he could not help when he saw the handcuffs, pistols, and cartridges disposed neatly and conveniently about the Sheriff’s waist. They looked so vicious, “disrespectable.”,The child seeing the twinkle in the older eyes, laughed aloud; and, wrapped in a voluminous apron, began the first task that had ever left its stain on her pretty fingers.，“Glory be! It’s pulled apart at the other end!” ejaculated the perspiring assistant.，“Where is the dern dog hurt?” commiserated Moses.，Billy stooped to tie shoestrings already tidy; he was gaining time for thinking. “I reckon doing things you don’t like is work, and doing things you do like is play,” he explained, doubtfully.“You haven’t noticed Jerusalem Crickets, yet,” Billy said impressively, anxious to distract attention from the little drama at the plate. He placed his second cat on the floor, a gaunt creature, brindled in many colors, with great scared-looking eyes. “She’s afraid of everybody. She never had any home till I brought her here, poor thing! Just kicked from door to door. And Geewhillikins, too—he was a tiny kitten put in a sack to drown out in the creek. And he was so plucky he just wiggled to shallow water and hollered for a deliverer. Of course that kind of cats don’t have manners. How could they?” Billy was a fine special pleader.

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.,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.,Before they turned into Main Street, however, the procession was in fair alignment, and the solemnity of the moment hushed all chatter. Billy’s most personal disappointment was Bouncer, who, unhappy because he could not caper in freedom at Billy’s heels, let his lovely, bushy tail, that usually waved above his back in a graceful curve, hang limp and dusty between his legs; while from drooping head and sad eyes, he looked reproachfully at Billy every time the latter ran past.,“This stove is not drawin’ any too good, an’ what with these pipes an’ the parlor pipes not actin’ christian-like my eyes run warter orl day long. Ebenezer Wopp, I sees a job ahead fer you. My patience is wore out an’ this very day you’ll git at the pipes and git the soot cleaned out.”,Mrs. Mifsud, in the lead of the rescuing party, ran through the garden gate in time to see St. Elmo fall headlong, his feet having become entangled in the long rank grass near the fence.,“You’d best go an’ take her hoss, Moses,” directed Mr. Wopp. Then raising his voice he called, “Go right on into the house, Mis’ Mifsud. Lize has jist gone in from the garden.”,Betty gazed shyly at her inquisitor. Her brown eyes sparkled with the adventure of meeting a real live piannerist, as she called him. Dinner was over and Mr. Zalhambra stood before the fire in the drawing-room grate. Stooping to warm his large white hands over the flame, his hypnotic eyes reflected strangely the glow of the fire. He watched Nell Gordon as she sat stroking the flowing fair tresses of Betty.,Sprang from his heathery couch in haste’?”,“St. Elmo’s lost, Ma,” wailed Maria. “We can’t find him and he’s wandered down the creek.”,“Well, papa did. If he was alive he’d be giving it to me about now, good and plenty.”,“Ah Miss Gordon, I see you love the music too,” he murmured in her ear.,[32]“There are other things besides gems, little girl.” Mrs. Bennett smiled and began to clear the table..