WickedBet

WickedBet reputable and safe Nero, nonchalantly fiddling a trifling accompaniment to the burning of Rome, had nothing on Moses, as that blithe-hearted boy whistled a joyous, albeit unmelodious, lilt to the devastation of Betty’s picture show box.,Fer our reapin’ bye ’n’ bye.”,“Huh!” grunted Moses, “your ole turkey aint worth an eyestrain.”,A tall, lean, loose-jointed, large-limbed man was enjoying the frosty air and walked briskly humming a gay tune. All at once he found his face upturned to the glorious blue sky and a youthful voice reached his ear, “Did you see the telegraph pole sail over that icy spot?” Then another voice equally youthful, but with a distinct absence of city polish, answered, “Betcher life I seen him, wouldn’t of missed it fer a punkin pie, he’s lookin’ fer gopher holes in the ground yet.”,“He was a real little cat Moses, wasn’t he? And you—you must be Pharaoh’s son instead of daughter.” The child laughed and clapped her hands.，The basket piled high with snowy linen and cotton seemed almost to overflow the brim. Betty pressed the clothes down with her brown hands, while the complaining boy enlarged on the sordid details of that trying wash-day and on the manner in which his mother had teased him. The child’s sense of humor outbalanced even her sympathy and a peal of laughter rang out. Her laugh was a long delicious trill, as though a bird had dropped from the clouds singing still with the sunrise tangled in its notes. Moses paused long enough for a procession of commas and semicolons to pass by. Then seeing his disappointment in her apparent lack of sympathy, Betty hastened to console him.，Betty, orphaned at the age of six, had been adopted by the kind-hearted Mrs. Wopp. The child found her chief joy in life, outside of Jethro, Nancy and Job, in a flower-bed. A small plot of ground had been allotted her for her own use, and there every spring for the last four years her precious flowers had bloomed and had filled her eyes with brightness and her soul with gladness. Morning-glories and nasturtiums were the surest to bloom. They climbed the strings so gracefully and turned the old weather-beaten fence where they grew into a tapestry of gorgeous dyes.，“Here’s Mis’ Mifsud an’ St. Elmo comin’ in the buckboard,” he announced.CHAPTER IV THE TWO-LIGHT TIME

“Sit near the front so you can give me inspiration, Miss Gordon,” the musician said in an undertone as he stood hat in hand ready to hurry off for the first show.,“There isn’t any Maskey’s any more,” May Nell mourned; “just ashes and old irons where used to be such oceans of goodies in such beautiful boxes and dishes.”,Betty winced slightly as the chilly weapon touched her face, but recollecting the importance of the issue at stake she submitted tamely to be shorn. In a few moments Moses stepped back to contemplate the result of his drastic work. There was no denying that it had totally changed his little sister’s appearance. A queer expression on Moses’ face made Betty enquire anxiously, “What is it? Don’t I look orlright Moses?”,As Clarence depicted the terror of the father, lest his arrow miss the mark and kill his son, Moses rose from his chair in breathless suspense. However, the arrow cleft the apple and left the boy unscathed, and the relieved Moses, sinking back in his chair, recovered himself sufficiently to murmur “What an orful chanct fer anyone ter take!”,Her questions brought long and wonderful tales of Billy’s younger life; of Edith when she, too, was a little girl. The child helped to set the table, carried in bread, salad plates, and jelly. “It shakes like the fat woman at the circus when she laughed. How do you make jelly?”,As she thought how dear and kind Moses had been to her, bringing this wonderful plant and the shell purse, not forgetting the peppermint bulls’ eyes, she went to sleep with the conviction that she must be the happiest girl in the world.,“Poor little Billy! You’ve had a hard night of it.”,“There ’re deer up there, all right; but of course we can’t get ’em. We’ll have to catch a jack rabbit beforehand and let him loose.”,“Did you see the fine bin of carrots, Mar?” inquired Betty.,Mrs. Bennett crossed the room and laid a tender hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You’re not strong and need perfect rest. Besides, you spoil the boy. It won’t hurt him to sleep there, and he must take the consequences of his own act.”,Betty kept her tour de force till the last and astounded Moses by riding into the yard on the back of a large cow. Molly had been padded to represent a camel and Betty rode perched insecurely on the hump of the lordly creature, holding Mrs. Wopp’s treasured red parasol to give the effect of a canopy.,“Moses Habakuk Ezra Wopp an’ Ebenezer Wopp! You’d orter be shamed of yerselves. You shorely must of fell with Lucifer when he come tumblin’ outer the sky. Them swear words make every single hair on my head stan’ on edge.”.