Kingamo

Kingamo Regular brand “No, Billy never forgets his cats,” his sister answered for him; “though the chickens might sometimes suffer but for mamma. Take your ill-bred felines out, Billy.”,Rain dropped her gray mantle behind a tree, and reappeared with her chalice of diamond-dust dew, to touch the fairy chorus to shimmering beauty. The gnomes, their queer masks and hunched shoulders showing grotesquely under their gray garb, joined the fairies’ dance. Wind came floating in as Summer Breeze. Storm was transformed to the Slave of the Sower; while Black Frost was perched high up at the rear, grinning from the top of the mountain.,“Don’t worry me Mosey, this is a ’portant day,” then turning to Miss Gordon she added, “I’ll take ’sturtiums an’ larkspur an’ sweet peas an’ you’ll be ever so happy lookin’ at them.” A busy silence ensued.,“Moses, you git to the barn an’ hunt the aigs, an’ min’ you look in the haystack; that ole yaller hen has been wantin’ ter set in the nigh corner of it.”,Moses capitalized his bulk to effectively fill the large chair into which he sank. He surveyed with approval the new trousers presented to him by Miss Gordon, and tried to blot from his mind the ignominy that had attended the wearing of the ill-fitting pair. Those discarded checked monstrosities languished under Moses’ bed in close consultation with a pair of decrepit and muddy shoes. It was so sweet to the boy to see signs of convalescence in Betty that he took great comfort in just gazing on her pale face with its wisps of fair hair across the forehead. He summed up his general attitude to life by whispering to himself, “I don’t give a doughnut fer orl the check pants in Alberta.”，“Don’t care a doughnut,” answered Moses defiantly, “I’d ruther turn the washin’ machine any day than stand like a goose spellin’ words any arss can spell.”，Billy ran off full of vague expectation born of his mother’s smile. No one in all the country round, not even Harold Prettyman, whose father had the finest farm in Vine County, had such a splendid place to play as the Bennetts’ back lot that sloped down to Runa Creek. As Billy slammed the gate and bounded out on a huge boulder that hung over the creek, a sounding cheer greeted him from below.，“Why, I wonder? She used to watch us at it and laugh.”“Now Moses,” she called at the end of the third verse, “git the water for the rinsin’.” The clanking lessened and slowly died down to a complaining rumble. It might have been some monster suffering from indigestion.

“If I can’t Vilette can. Old Bob goes by himself, anyway.” He made a brave though unsuccessful effort to appear as usual.,At first he could not eat with relish, his mind was so distracted with admiration of the magnificent room, and impatient to get his worrying secret off his heart and conscience. But his wise host ordered so artfully, and filled the intervals of waiting with such delightful stories and anecdotes, explanations of the decorations, funny facts or conjectures concerning the hotel and guests, that before he knew it, Billy had, he told his mother afterward, referring to his stomach, “loaded her up to the guards, ’nough to make you ’shamed of me, mother.”,Mr. Wopp looked up in approval and brandished a formidable looking piece of fat meat, precariously poised on one prong of his fork and in his efforts to lose none of its dripping flavor, described an uncertain spiral in the air.,“Yes, Captain,” she answered, her eyes aglow while she smoothed refractory frills. She wore a wonderful trailing robe of tissue paper, “ruffled to the guards,” Billy said. On her head was a towering cap of the same; and a light wind bellied out her wide angel sleeves like sails before a spanking breeze.,He looked at the beaming faces, at the beautiful table with Jean’s great pagoda cake in the centre, the dates, 1893-1906, in evergreen; at the flowers everywhere; at the dishes,—they usually ate from vine leaves at their out-of-door feasts,—at the paper napkins folded fantastically and hovering over the table like gay butterflies. His eloquent face told his surprise, his gratitude, his delight. He opened his mouth to speak some fitting word, but it wouldn’t come. He tried again, for he felt the occasion called for something formally appreciative. But only a whimsical idea flitted into his mind; and he sang back—,Mrs. Wopp then proceeded to enlarge on the horrific pilgrimage of Jonah through the vasty interior caverns of the whale.,“First you must eat, and rest, so that you can tell us about your mother; then we’ll see what can be done.” Mrs. Bennett took the child into the pleasant living-room where Billy had put a fourth place at the table next his own.,CHAPTER VI.—AN EVENING IN THE WOPP PARLOR.,Rain dropped her gray mantle behind a tree, and reappeared with her chalice of diamond-dust dew, to touch the fairy chorus to shimmering beauty. The gnomes, their queer masks and hunched shoulders showing grotesquely under their gray garb, joined the fairies’ dance. Wind came floating in as Summer Breeze. Storm was transformed to the Slave of the Sower; while Black Frost was perched high up at the rear, grinning from the top of the mountain.,“That’s you, papa,” Clarence piped, as an anxious post warning.,Billy had the excitable musical temperament. He spent his forces lavishly, and it was because of this that he was a leader; could think and act quickly in emergencies, as when he saved the operetta from failure. Edith and her mother knew that he had lived hard through the past few weeks, that next to Edith herself he had carried the entertainment, though Jean had been a host also. So it pleased Mrs. Bennett that afternoon to see Billy start off alone for the country.,“Tremendous long visit,” Billy taunted; “what’d you come for? Another donation for my new sister?”.