Wild Spells

Wild Spells reputable and safe “Well I only go ’way about onct in a blue moon,” declared Mrs. Wopp, “an’ I feel so unsartin ’bout everything. Here we are a pack of Gadarene swine goin’ orff to a great city to eat husks I s’pose like the prodigal son. Never mind Ebenezer we’ll come back right glad I’ll bet to the fatted calf.” She pinched his ear in an elephantine playfulness as though he might be the fatted calf himself.,He was not more inquisitive than other boys, yet the mystery, the many uncanny tales told of the old house, fired him with a desire to know its secrets. Long before he was born a murder had left its stain there. The owners, suspected but unconvicted, moved away; and for years the house stared vacantly at passers. The coming of the Italians had only increased its bad name. Late travellers on the lonely road declared that shadowy forms and flickering lights passed the lower windows and down into the cavernous basement; yet no sounds ever came from behind the barred doors.,The whole garden had been fenced in as a precaution against the encroachment of predatory animals. Molly, the inquisitive black cow, or Josh and Jake, who had no proper sense of the fitness of things, would have liked nothing better than to sample Mrs. Wopp’s prize turnips and scanty crop of Indian corn, and to trample into the soft earth whatever did not suit their dainty palates.,“Our house isn’t big enough.”,“This here thing looks like a mule with his ribs druv in an’ stan’in’ on his haunches. What d’ye call it?”，“You’ll have to break the record if you get here before noon.”，“This milk happens to be cream. I’ve been wondering what kind of a dessert will take all this.”，“But you said you would take me to him. I thought you knew where he is.”They looked at her a minute, dropped reluctantly to the floor, and retired.

“I can walk,” she said, struggling to be put down.,As he crashed again through the close-grown brush he almost forgot the ugly scene just enacted below. He had been sorry to leave Bouncer to come with the girls; now he was glad. It was good to be quite alone up there with Nature in her less familiar places. A dark ravine lured him. Well as he knew the mountain he had never explored this gorge. The delicate fragrance of wild azaleas greeted him; he could see their pale pink bloom tipping the tall trees that rose out of the chaparral forty or fifty feet above the stream that tinkled beneath them.,To-day his mother’s words had left a pang. He would soon be a man and have to “think for himself.” Yes, and work, too. “Gee whiz! It’ll be tough not to play any more,” he exclaimed under his breath as he bowled along the tree-lined road that led to the Prettyman farm.,“Yes; he’d lick him too, if Flash wasn’t Tom’s body-guard.”,“Please did the lot hurt Joner when it fell?” queried a sober-minded seeker of truth.,Having disposed of the song, dear to her mother’s heart, in spite of the protestations of Moses, Betty went to the kitchen and in a few moments returned with a steaming pot of tea.,“I am wartchin’, Mar,” replied Moses, “But Josh ’pears to be worryin’ ’bout somethin’. He’s chewin’ his bit an’ breakin’ inter a run-like every minute.”,“Well, old Tom’ll have to be cleverer than I ever saw him to pay for that.”,“I b’lieve Moses’ll eat jelly-roll some day till he rolls up hisself. I’m orful hungry, can I hev some fresh bread?”,Outside of the flower garden proper and between it and the vegetables, were several rows of gay sunflowers. Mr. Wopp approved of these mightily, because the seeds were “sich grand feed for the chickings.” Betty looked on these gaudy sentinels with sorrowing pity, because they had not the daintiness of the other flowers.,“Here’s to our mothers,,Notwithstanding Moses’ endeavors to be attractive, Isobel Crump’s voice, as she addressed her brother’s friend was so frigid that her words penetrated his ear like sharply-pointed icicles..