Book of Mines

Book of Mines Ten years of prestige He had left his traps,—the fight had sent all else flying out of his mind. No matter. He could set them in some vineyard. Already the short grass on the hills was brown, and many of the wild flowers were past their blooming. The rabbits would be seeking the tender green of the vines, the purpling alfalfa, standing lush and sweet, ready for mowing.,Viewing the upturned swill-pail, she suddenly became cynical.,“Yer a limb o’ Satan orl right. The shawl was needin’ dyein’ anyway. I’ll jist make it green. Yer Par used to say I looked right harnsome in green, so I’ll s’prise him with a new shawl over my shoulders.” She turned to the dog. The strenuous exertions of the afternoon had noticeably reduced his girth.,The young dancers in the hall found the change of music decidedly exhilarating, as an occasional whoop testified.,“Betty’s not goin’ to no kingdom come yet,” assured Mrs. Wopp, her optimism rising like a star of the first magnitude to lighten the darkness of her son’s midnight sky.，St. Elmo looked at the specimens in his hand. “These pansies is most deaded. I fink I’ll fwow them away,” he declared.，“I’ll get word from them in the morning. Don’t worry any more, but rest; sleep if you can. You can’t help them till you have helped yourself.”，“Yes, I could eat a graven image.”Vigorously all joined in the closing hymn and Mrs. Wopp’s high soprano could be heard above all the other voices. A sense of duty well performed added even greater power to the vocal billowing.

From the waist down, Moses’ masculine and uncouth figure seemed to utter a dull protest against cut-me-downs. There are many forces in life that growing youths are not able to control. One of these, in the career of Moses, was the inexorable will of his mother that ordained homemade garments for his nether limbs. Made from his father’s discarded trousers of black and grey check, the new pair of abominations that adorned the legs of the youthful Wopp bore evidence to the unskilled fingers of the maker. They had the generous dimensions allowed by an imaginative and economical mind that could look into the future and could see legs lengthening and a general expansion. In fact, the coarse checked tweed fell in slight gathers, fore and aft. The dingy greenish-grey coat that slouched from Moses’ shoulders did not fail to heighten the effect, but seemed to set the costume in italics.,The Mifsud ranch-house was situated in a valley close to Ripple Creek. This stream was guarded in its serpentine course by a fringe of trees which extended several rods on each side. Moses drove up to the house door with a flourish and his passengers alighted. His mother paused a moment to urge, “Be sure an’ git yer chores done early, Moses, an’ you an’ Par be here fer supper by six o’clock.”,“Miss Gordon, with all his book larnin’ he knowed no more ’bout black-jack than I know ’bout divin’ fer pearls, and the Bullock boys thort he was no good anyhow, ef he couldn’t beat their Par at cards. So one mornin’ they met him as he was goin’ to school, an’ they give him a good beatin’ up, then flung him in Rodd’s creek to cool him, bein’ winter. He crawled outer the creek, Miss Gordon, an’ never went to the school no more. It shorely was a jedgement on him fer playin’ those wicked card games. Moses, parse the ketchup.”,All this time Mr. Wopp had carried and brushed and shaken stove-pipe lengths until his face and bald head resembled a latticework trellis. Only one length remained to be operated on before proceeding to the upper storey, where the stove-pipe continued its tortuous way to the chimney, warming sundry rooms on its beneficent course.,“That’s what I’m hurrying for. Mamma sent me on an errand to Mrs. Black’s and I want to be back at the station in time to see the train come in. I wish we were going to have a refugee. Wasn’t the earthquake awful?”,“Don’t you think the new teacher is jist lovely Moses, with her big shinin’ blue eyes an’ wavy black hair?” Betty eagerly enquired, “An’ aint her clothes lovely too?”,“The children will get too tired,” the Snake Charmer warned.,CHAPTER XVI.—MOSES HAS EXCITING EXPERIENCES.,“I was looking foh Jonah and the whale he met on the woad, and I got losted, I did.” St. Elmo ended his fantastic explanation with an extensive gulp. Moses took a small grubby hand in his and led the afflicted boy in triumph to the other searchers.,“No, no! Don’t, mother! I’ll run away! I’ll—” He groaned and left his sentence unfinished.,The solid rock of the mountain had been cut away from the rear of the house to form a natural, paved court. At the top was a small chicken coop, its wall flush with the wall of rock; and near it grew an oak sapling not larger than Billy’s arm.,The unstinted praise of the children in the operetta, the aftermath of buzz about the “show” at school,—this excitement lasted for a day or so; but on this lowering Sunday tired nature put in a claim for her own; and relaxed nerves were irritably near the surface..