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SlotsPalacel Download +128K Mrs. Bennett spoke frequently of the change in Billy. He was growing more thoughtful, observant. He remembered small duties, noticed if mother or sister looked tired or ill, and volunteered help where formerly he would not have known help was needed. Perhaps none of them knew, least of all May Nell herself, how lastingly her example of watchful kindness had impressed itself on Billy’s heart.,“Ef it hadn’t been fer Mosey, St. Elmo might of been lorst yet,” remarked Betty, gazing reflectively into the fire. “Ef he was goin’ walkin’ on till he found Joner, he’d of been gone a long while.”,“Moses stan’s on his head so’s his brains’ll filter back into place,” teased Mrs. Wopp.,“But it’s a secret,” she whispered in smothered distress. “Please to go!”,While Betty had been busy in the garden her pet turkey, Job, who depended on his little mistress to feed him, became very hungry. Job suffered under great disadvantages. His general one-sided condition, caused by his partial blindness, rendered him incapable of picking up the various dainties on which his brethren fattened. It must be confessed that the fondest and most partial vision could not overlook Job’s undoubted scrawniness. Indeed, had he not received individual attention from the deeply sympathetic Betty, there is every reason to believe that his career would have been shortened by that inexorable law which, in those forms of life termed the lower, decrees the extinction of the weak.，What more might he do to hasten the Saturday work? He could not chop the kindling or fill the wood boxes. The weeding! It was behind. Both mother and sister had reminded him repeatedly, but he had forgotten. Only yesterday his sister had made tidy the flower beds that flanked the house; but the melons, the vegetables,—they were not done, and that would make no noise.，Moses Wopp, not quite reconciled to this unexpected order of things, as it seemed to involve a protracted fast for his already clamoring stomach, nevertheless made haste to obey his father’s instructions. Josh and Jake were quickly unhitched and led into the stable. They were accommodated with a mangerful of hay, which they immediately fell to munching. Moses then ran after Mr. Wopp and Clarence, who were already busily searching the wooded banks of the creek, thoroughly scrutinizing the underbrush, which in some places was exceedingly dense and tangled. Within the next half-hour they were joined by four other men, despatched by Mrs. Mifsud, and the whole party proceeded slowly and carefully down the creek, some one of the number occasionally shouting the name of the lost boy.，“But if your steamer works you don’t want its secrets peddled round; and girls always blab.”“You haven’t noticed Jerusalem Crickets, yet,” Billy said impressively, anxious to distract attention from the little drama at the plate. He placed his second cat on the floor, a gaunt creature, brindled in many colors, with great scared-looking eyes. “She’s afraid of everybody. She never had any home till I brought her here, poor thing! Just kicked from door to door. And Geewhillikins, too—he was a tiny kitten put in a sack to drown out in the creek. And he was so plucky he just wiggled to shallow water and hollered for a deliverer. Of course that kind of cats don’t have manners. How could they?” Billy was a fine special pleader.

The curtain fell on the first act and the house rocked with the noise. It is probable the audience, predetermined to be pleased, would have approved anything offered; but so far it was more beautiful than had been expected.,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?,“Before vacation? Why, they’ll be just the things to do in vacation.”,“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.,“Light the stove, Mose, an’ git the house het up. Mis’ Williams must of been froze to a cinder yesterday when she was here. That stove did nothin’ but smoke till our eyes leaked. I expected every minute to see her turn into an iced berg. Do you know, Ebenezer, Mis’ Williams told me that Mrs. Frame’s sister married the oldest son of Mr. Frame an’ his first wife.”,Mrs. Wopp surmised from the dejected appearance of the young rancher, coupled with the smiles over the footlights which she had observed with rising wrath, that trouble was brewing, and she whispered audibly to herself, “A musician’s orl right on a pianner stool, but when it comes to gittin’ up in the mornin’ an’ choppin’ wood to bile the kettle give me a farmer.” Her cogitations became louder. “I s’pose he thinks cos he has a percession of carpital letters arter his name he can git anyone fer the arskin’. When he smiled so at our Miss Gordon I could of slain him with the jawrbone of an arss.” In her championship of Howard’s interests, Mrs. Wopp became an ardent villifier of the pianist and she administered an oral castigation with feminine vigor.,Moses was whistling a dismal discordant air in the backyard when the voice of his mother smote his ears.,“Moses, I hear yer Par comin’ with the hay,” announced Mrs. Wopp, suddenly. “You’ll hev to go help him with it.”,Let us find our sweetest comfort,“Yes, I s’pose we can listen to you scramble up and down the piano keys all night, but if I do anything it’s another story.”,“‘One burnished sheet of living gold,,A lot more nonsense he rattled off, squeezing and kissing her till she was breathless with laughter..