pragmatic play

pragmatic play To their intense disgust and astonishment Spry’s white face did not The young dancers in the hall found the change of music decidedly exhilarating, as an occasional whoop testified.,Mrs. Keeler looked at her sagely. "Erie would never marry any man like Hinter," she asserted.,At this Mona breaks into a sweet but ringing laugh, that makes Lady Rodney (who is growing sleepy, and, therefore, irritable) turn, and fix upon her a cold, reproving glance.,The watchers stood with eyes glued to the ridge-pole. By and by they saw a black tail-feather obtrude itself from a hole just beneath the roof's gable. A black body followed and Croaker came tiptoeing back along the ridge.,There is a ghostly tapping (as of some departed spirit who would fain enter once again into the old halls so long forgotten) against the window pane. Doubtless it is some waving branch flung hither and thither by the cruel tempest that rages without. Shadows come and go; and eerie thoughts oppress the breast:—，From this hesitating manner Bob knew that Jerry was guilty.，Thus adjured by his father the elocutionist began in a loud dramatic voice:，“Surely! On a job like this so far away from any regular transportation line the Service has to construct all the necessities of life—and some luxuries. It built the town that we’ll be coming to shortly, put in the electric light system, erected a school and a hospital. In some places we’ve even built a motion picture theatre to keep the men satisfied. Probably there’s one on this job. When I was up here last they were planning it. I bet you never thought Uncle Sam was in the amusement business.”"But the Voodoo stone?" said Jen, wondering what she meant.

Griffin chuckled. "You see, I was in the ante-room, cataloguing the prints—you know I got that job last week. Well, the Board was droning on in the big room in their usual uninteresting fashion and I was deep in admiration of a Rembrandt etching—that one with the hat and the open window behind him—when Green sails past me, head up and majesty writ large on her bulging brow. She always does put on lugs when she reports to the Committee, so I didn't sit up and take notice right away. But in a minute or two I came to life, I can tell you! She was rolling off the sentences about 'injustice to a high-minded student' and 'unnecessary humiliation' and 'reparation to one who was an ornament to any school,' and a lot of other junk like that. I tell you, I could have hugged the old girl! The Board just sat still, like school-boys caught stealing jam, and she went on, getting more flowery all the time.","Where is it?",“Johnny Blossom had permission to invite all his friends to Kingthorpe today. He was to ask all who had been kind to him, and it looks as if he had a great many kind friends. This is his first birthday since he became heir of Kingthorpe. Perhaps you think it is an easy thing to be that—that it means only to shake ripe fruit into your lap and to live in big, bright rooms. Johnny Blossom will understand more and more, as time goes on and he grows older, that it is not easy to be the Kingthorpe heir.,The Aurora's boat was swept alongside the brig, and Captain Acton and the Admiral clambered over the side up a short flight of steps, and in an instant Lucy was clasped in the devouring embrace of her father. Such an old-world scene taxes the highest gifts of the pen or the brush. This Louisa Ann was about fifty years old; she was nearly as broad as she was long. Her fore-mast was stepped far in the bows; her decks were stained and grimy; the paint had faded out of the inside of her bulwarks. Her sails were patched and so dingy that they might have been coloured as a smack's. Her rusty sides were lined with yawning seams amid which three little circular windows were merged with no accentuation from the dirt-shrouded glass which prevented the sea from entering the blistered, worn, mani-coloured hull. Her sailors looked as though[Pg 359] they were shipwrecked: long-haired, bearded, sallow, in clothes considerably tattered, in aspect melancholy and dejected with lack of nourishment, dullness of sailing and ceaseless motion: for here was the tub wallowing like a buoy in a popple upon a smooth sea, and the frightful weather she would make off Cape Horn or in a gale of wind the imagination of a sailor could readily picture by witnessing her motions now.,"What else?" says Mona, shyly.,They fired up. An ominous sizz and clatter began. Five pairs of hands shoved the smart boat into the water at May Nell’s feet. The children shouted. The dog barked and the chickens cackled. And above all the din May Nell’s sweet voice rang out, “I christen thee, O wondrous vessel, The Fair Ellen.” She improvised hastily; for no one had thought to prepare a speech for the occasion.,Oh, dear! How dreadful! At home no one knew a thing about anything, and here he had behaved like this and perhaps hurt Bob. To “break a horse’s wind” was dangerous he knew, because he had heard about one of the livery stable horses that had to be shot on account of being “broken-winded.” But Bob! It was impossible that it should go that way with Bob! Oh, it couldn’t!,"There is a camp to the westward, up the river," they replied; "but you must not take the left-hand trail going up because on that trail lives a woman who invites men to wrestle with her and then kills them. Avoid her.",In the background partly hidden by the gathering gloom, some fifteen men, and one or two women, are all huddled together, whispering eagerly, with their faces almost touching. The women, though in a great minority, are plainly having the best of it.,Av love 'neath th' skies av ould Ireland, dear—,“You—you’ve found out something?” he stammered eagerly.,His mind’s eye pictured the network of canals that would run off on each side and which, by bringing that magic thing, water, to the parched earth, would transform it into fruitful acres. Once around a bend from the dam he was alone in the immense country. Not a vestige of human occupancy could be seen. The desert stretched way out on either side, broken here and there by hills, or buttes, as they are called..