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stake.comlogin Register +188K In the very centre of the room stood a small table swathed in a hand-painted felt drape. On this reposed the huge family Bible in which was chronicled the marriages, births and deaths of the Wopp family during the last three generations.,“Some o’ the men was sorft-hearted an’ agin Hingin’ Joner overboard, so they rowed reel hard to git to land.”,“I’d give my collar butting fer a seat on Noer’s ark right now,” said Moses, loudly, interrupting the speaker. Then the roof began to leak in another spot and a stream of water poured down on Betty’s moving picture apparatus, so that the show had to be discontinued.,Billy knew by sight the two Italians who lived there, brothers yet enemies. Each dwelt by himself in a corner of the great building.Each cultivated alone his share of the straggling vineyard on the heights above, too steep and rocky for a plough; though the lush acres on the river bottom went fallow. If either overstepped his bounds they fought. Billy had seen one of these encounters; and the fierce fire in their dark faces, the passion in the foreign words they spoke,—oaths the boy felt they must be,—sent him flying home, tinged his dreams for many a night.,“Sunday School, too? How long you’ll be away!”，Even the white chickens followed in a cackling bunch as they always did when Billy appeared at this hour, for it was almost feeding time. And the pigeons wheeled and whirred, lighting almost under foot only to be up and off again, a flash of white and gray.，Thy high commands shall quick be done.”，“Warsh yer ban’s, Mosey, an’ Par, an’ come on, Mar, here’s yer tea an’ crackers. Wisht I hed a piece of jelly-roll.”“Moses!” called husband and wife, simultaneously. Mrs. Wopp’s voice spanned an interval of about a dozen semi-tones, and as it always grew in volume in direct ratio to the emergency of the duty to be imposed, the last syllable of her son’s name fell on that wretched boy’s ear like a clap of thunder. Mr. Wopp’s accents remained on nearly all occasions at the same even degree of meekness. Nature had not given him the temperament to indulge in crescendos or double fortes.

“Do you like it, Sunday School, I mean? I don’t. I like church, though,—the great booming organ, the beautiful singing. And when the minister speaks I just float away into fairy-land and never come back till he says, ‘The-Lord-make-his-face-to-shine-upon-us-amen.’”,“Personally, I should be agreeably disposed to requesting Mr. Wopp to officiate,” answered the lady addressed.,So close was the affiliation between Betty and Moses that exactly three-quarters of an hour after her departure with Miss Gordon for Calgary the impetuous youth was at the rancher’s home trying to inveigle him into a conspiracy to follow the holiday-makers to that city of dazzling attractions.,“Ef you could only see how you look, Betty. You must hev some eyebrows somehow.”,Betty entered the room last and was rendered almost speechless when she saw the birthday cake. She knew it would have one more candle than the cake for her last birthday had, but, O wonder of wonders! Around the edge was a wreath of morning-glories, made of pink and white icing, and in the heart of each was a silver dew-drop!,“I just said the whale must have been bustin’?” admitted Pete, reluctantly. Mrs. Wopp could not logically argue the point with the astute Peter, so she went on to depict vividly Jonah’s further vicissitudes.,Acting on this timely suggestion, Mrs. Wopp deposited the mischievous youths on small chairs, one on each side of her table, directly under her watchful eye. Cracking nuts seemed to have been the special proposed form of amusement for the afternoon. By the end of five minutes the substitute teacher had set several large noisy paper bags on the window ledge.,CHAPTER XIII.—MOSES GAINS PRESTIGE.,“All right. I’m off!”,And gents your black and tan,,Howard Eliot guided his charges through the mazes of the city to a restaurant. Moses with the perennial appetite of fourteen ate silently and steadily, not omitting one item on the menu. He gorged.,“A perfectly gorgeous occasion,” Bess supplemented..