Taj Rummy

Taj Rummy ten years of prestige For five hundred dollars a week he had pranced to the admiring vaudeville audience; but once let the artist lay bare his soul in real music and whispering reaches his ear. But there was no use complaining, no one could understand his disgust.,All that dreadful day the man searched for the little girl’s mother, but their house was early prey to the flames, and he could get no trace of her. He was only passing through the city; and having fortunately saved his money and tickets, was anxious to be on his way across the Pacific. Consequently nothing better offered than to send the child with other refugees to the kind hospitality of the country.,Wait till the clouds roll by.”,“It looks jist as ef the sun had crept into that corner at larst,” she decided.,THE day was fine. Billy, not long released from his green shade, wondered if the world was ever so lovely before; the flowers so sweet, the birds so joyous. Could it be only a few short weeks since that gray Sunday? Billy’s confinement had quickened him, introduced him to himself; now he looked on life with wider eyes, with a more understanding heart.，“Surely Billy has earned it, Mrs. Bennett,” Mr. Smith urged.，Norah Bliggins carried in a little basket several carrots of various sizes and complexions, all carefully scrubbed as became respectable members of the vegetable family, and shining as sweet and clean as the face of the child. These must have put to shame their forked brother, for that perturbed carrot rolled heavily to a corner and hid his grimy visage.，“Mudgie, Mudgie,” he shrieked.Yet it was very strange, they were all happy! Happier, she felt, than her own mother with maids and money, gems, rich gowns, and her motor car at command. Why was it? “Those that won’t work shouldn’t eat.” Could that be true? Then she should not eat, for she never worked. She wondered how it would seem to work.

Now in the silence and fragrance his tightened springs began to relax. Presently he found himself in a dream of possibilities of the island,—Ellen’s Isle, he always called it; of what might be done with the smooth places in the river, the hills, Sunol Creek not far away, boiling and tumbling in boisterous beauty; of hidden nooks, piled boulders, and tiny meadows, vine-enclosed and flower-fragrant.,One tall, ambitious girl contributed a unique float called, “Lot’s Wife Looking Backward.” She had not been certain of the color for the desert, consequently had made the whole thing, including the wagon, the boys, and herself snowy white. She had copied an old Bible picture, carrying out the idea with sheets, and such liberal doses of flour, that only a heavy dew was needed to turn the float to dough instead of salt. However, the sun shone, and the addition of diamond dust over all made a very realistic picture that Billy praised heartily.,Supper passed. Edith went to church, Billy to keep an appointment with his teacher; and the spring twilight settled down over the room. Mrs. Bennett knew this would be a trying hour, and hastened her work, inventing some light task for May Nell; hastened also the errand to her own room. Yet though she was gone but a moment, on returning a sob greeted her from the cuddled heap on the couch.,“Say, little kid, what’s your name?” he asked, merrily, as he routed a great white cat from his own chair and placed it before the fire for the child.,“Now, Moses, look sharp. Quit yer foolin’ an’ git busy,” called Mrs. Wopp, to the son and heir, whose toilet was not even begun. She herself was busy braiding Betty’s fair hair. “Be sure to warsh yer neck an’ ears. Larst party we was to, Mis’ Williams says to me, she says, ‘Is that your Moses settin’ on that bench? La me! he seems darker complected than I ever seed him before. I thort he were some Arfrican,’ she says. I hev always been a godly woman, Moses, ef I do go to a dance now an’ agin. Anyhow, the good book says there is a time to dance, but it aint got no patience with dirt. Git yerself cleaned up, then go an’ hook up the team.”,He obeyed, talking whimsically to his pets as he went.,Although the temptation to reckless haste was great, Betty resisted it. It was not long, however, before a pile of shining blue willow-ware was restored to its accustomed place on the oil-cloth-covered pantry shelves, and Betty, seizing her sunbonnet, hurried out of doors.,“Oh, no, no! I’m fit—I must find her myself—right now!”,The Wopp parlor was seldom entered, except on very special occasions or when Mrs. Wopp with formality and no undue haste dusted the furniture. The room had an air of solemnity and gloom, absent in the cheerful dining-room where the family usually sat. A homemade rag carpet covered the floor. Six slippery, horsehair chairs, one of them a rocker, and a horsehair couch, which did not invite confidence, were ranged stiffly around the sides of the room. In one corner was an ancient organ, wheezy and querulous with neglect, and in another stood a lofty what-not, on whose numerous shelves were deposited the family treasures. Here, was a woolly lamb at one time beloved of Moses; there his tin savings bank. Stiffly upright stood Betty’s wax doll Hannah, seldom played with and then only for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wopp was represented by a few shell boxes and a match box of china flanked by a sleek china cat.,In the front seat of the Wallace school sat Mannel Rodd. Nell Gordon declared that he was the roundest object she had ever seen in human form. Though he had arrived at the mature age of five, he still retained that cherubic appearance which one sees in the paintings of old masters. His eyes were as round as the rather sparsely-located buttons on his shirt. His nose was a small round knob. When he opened his little round mouth to lubricate a squeaky slate pencil or perhaps to enunciate some such interesting statement as this, “The cat is on the mat,” he disclosed a row of pearly little teeth. Indeed his whole face would have been as round as the moon, were it not that his chin took an unexpected little saucer-like curve in the very middle of it.,Here his laughter became a series of concussions decidedly menacing to his well-being.,“There isn’t any Maskey’s any more,” May Nell mourned; “just ashes and old irons where used to be such oceans of goodies in such beautiful boxes and dishes.”.