Spinanga 5

Spinanga 5 100,000 players “Oh, the kids’—boys’ dogs are mostly old or else too fat to run, like Bouncer. I guess the rabbit can get away,—too soon, perhaps. We’ll have you for Fair Ellen.”,“‘The sturdy oak and ash unite’;,“What things?”,“So they took up Joner an’ tossed him inter the sea.”,Mr. Crump indulged in an unusual hobby, the collection of old musical instruments, and a motley group it was that Moses eyed with growing wonder.，“Betty dimples in an’ out, like Mar’s dough,” he remarked, joyously, “she’s shore gittin’ better.”，“Missee Lancastler, she say you heap good show. Now you heap hungly. You catchee him plenty glub.” With that he uncovered a treat that made them forget the circus. They munched the sandwiches, the luscious fruit, candy, and cake, and other good things from Mrs. Lancaster’s generous pantry, and discussed the procession; voted Mrs. Lancaster a trump; and decided to have a circus every year.，“Now ef you would jist play ‘Home Sweet Home’ with variations, my dear, we’ll arterwards hev a game of crokinole. Crokinole is sich an amusin’ game.”By this time Mr. Wopp was bearing a length of pipe into the yard. The parlor looked like a morgue with its inanimate objects lying bidden under sheets and cloths of varying degrees of past usefulness. Through a hole of one sheet could be seen the listless towzled head of Hannah, her faded wax countenance betraying the need of a tonic.

“Are your going to church?” she asked, disappointment drawing her lips to a tremulous curve.,Billy suspected his mother was waiting for him; he must hurry, he thought. Yet he couldn’t resist showing off a bit. He bent over his wheel, went by the girls with a rush and a “Hello!” made a neat turn, wheeled a figure “8” around a team or two, shouted, “Don’t frame up anything there!” as he passed a second time, and whizzed through the arch in his own high hedge with one wheel in the air.,Mr. Wells the clergyman was of English birth, very conservative and inclined to be shy. He was unusually tall with broad shoulders. Mrs. Wopp once said of him, “When Mr. Wells gits his gownd on, he’s the hull lan’scape.” The deeply pious lady seldom criticized things ecclesiastical; but she had “feelin’s that ef Ebenezer Wopp bed of took to larnin’ like his Mar wished, he’d of looked amazin’ well in that pulpit, better nor Mr. Wells.”,It was Mrs. Wopp’s voice. From her remarks one would gather that the rarest perfumes wafted on the winds invoked by Solomon could never seem so sweet to Woppian nostrils as the mingled odor of hay and freshly dug carrots.,Amid the wealth of love how could the little heart refuse comfort? Billy tossed her to his shoulder and carried her to his mother’s room, where both women coddled her and Edith sang her into a sweet sleep.,A chill as from an ice field swept over Billy. His heart seemed to fall down, down, as far as his shoes. He noticed that things looked darker, and his head felt light and queer. Another fear assailed him; would he, too, collapse, leave the little girls alone with the terror of two senseless boys?,CHAPTER VI “THE TRIUMPH OF FLORA”,Ray when the sun shines on your bed,,Then one day, after several years, a stranger had come to town with a startling story. He said that he had been a sailor on the “Wanderer,” when she had made her last voyage. The ship had been blown in a gale upon the rocky coast of a small island in the south seas. He with several others of the crew and a few passengers had managed to get to land and had been hospitably treated by the natives. A small trading-vessel which regularly visited the island had taken them off in the course of the next few weeks, but one of their number, a passenger named Snoop, had refused to leave. He had asserted he might as well be there as anywhere else. Later reports brought from the island by the crew of the trading-vessel had been to the effect that Mr. Snoop was leading a tranquil and peaceful existence. He was espoused to several dusky maidens and was so much revered and respected as the only possessor of a white skin on the island, that he was never expected to stir hand or foot in any way suggesting work.,“Gosh!” he exclaimed, as Isobel closed on the last startlingly unexpected note, “that’s where some feller planks his strawr hat on a beauty butterfly!”,“Now, Mosey, Mar’d be as mad as a wet hen ef she heard you. I want two bits to give to the heathens in Arfrica an’ Mar don’t pay me fer doin’ chores like she pays you. Wisht I was a boy.”,CHAPTER III.—A DAY AT SCHOOL..