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Betting Book IDl Where Talent Gathers: Asia's Best Online Casino!", CHAPTER XVI THE BRIDGE TO SAFETY,As the four descended the air in the gorge became clearer. They approached the hut stealthily; and when in full view of the closed door, the Sheriff told Billy his part of the work was done, and ordered him home out of the fire.,“All but finding the job, mother. Jobs don’t hunt boys; and mine’s going to be waiting for me when the school house door shuts: that is, if I can persuade any man in the town or county that he needs a boy my size.”,“Aint that wonderful Miss Gordon? An’ Betty never had a lesson in her life. She jist naterly takes to music,” said Mrs. Wopp complacently.,Jean and the twins, Charley, George and some others, rattled down the stairs; while Clarence and Harry stood rigid, with wooden scymitars drawn, one on each side of the door.，“Her hand would be as pretty as any one’s if she didn’t have to work so hard,” Billy thought loyally; and promised himself again that the first money he earned should buy his mother a diamond ring.，“I was ten in January, the twelfth,” May Nell replied, with no pride in her tone; she was always older than those of her size. Yet she was not prepared for the gasps and backward movement of the twins.，But May Nell was not to be comforted, till that evening when she composed a wonderful ode to “The Wreck of the Fair Ellen.”Before answering, Mr. Wopp solemnly handed Moses first the reins then the dog, after which he slowly and carefully descended himself.

“What is Betty like?”,Half paralyzed with astonishment Billy went with the Doctor to the Sheriff’s office; but he was out and the deputy didn’t know when he would return; thought it might be within an hour or so. There was nothing to do but wait. Billy’s perplexed, baffled face touched the Doctor. His temples were already gray, but he had not forgotten how a boy feels.,He was soon at the “lodge of ample size” made the week before, not of “strong logs” but of old fence-rails and willow twigs. He wondered if the girls would be able to imagine it a “lodge,” or if May Nell and Jean, who were to come a little later, could fix it according to the poem.,“I love, thou lovest, he loves,” said Clarence, scornfully, in answer to this preposterous question.,“I want Howard Eliot,” she cried, “he can sing so lovely, an’ I want Miss Gordon, she’s so comfortin’.”,She was a queer draggled little creature, with her soaked and tattered dress, and her yellow curls all stringlets. Timidly she touched Jimmy’s blistered hands, realized what he had saved her from, and when she looked her gratitude into his dark eyes something awoke in his heart that never slept again.,“And there are many times when the duty itself is disagreeable, yet doing it brings a finer joy than shirking it ever could bring.”,“P’raps I’ll hinder more than help,” Howard answered, grasping Mrs. Wopp’s outstretched hand and looking questioningly at Nell.,If he had been older he would have said he had “the blues.” Yet probably he would not have known that his mental—and physical—condition was a natural result of the long strain of previous weeks. All the children felt it. That morning the cousins, Clarence and Harry, who loved each other dearly, had come to blows in the Sunday School room before the teachers arrived, over the question of which one of them should marry Miss Edith. Clarence received a bloody scratch the full length of his palm from Harry’s Band of Mercy pin; while the careful parting disappeared from his own hair, and a red splotch marred the whiteness of his wide collar. No one can tell what further calamity might have happened had not the Twins opportunely arrived and questioned of the quarrel.,“I am given to understand by the best fashion-plates, Mrs. Wopp, that the garment you term an ‘underwaist’ is now designated a casserole.”,He threw himself on the bed and wept the bitterest tears he had ever shed in his life, tears of shame. There he lay—hours, he thought—determined to bear his pain and disgrace alone. Yet it was only minutes when he heard his mother in her room, coming!,The loft in the barn had been swept and garnished by Mr. Wopp for Betty’s moving picture show, and thither, after the preliminary how-d’you-do’s were over, she led her eager audience. Her head was held at the exact angle for ascending the ladder to perform the imposing duties of moving picture operator, and her foot was on the first rung when she suddenly thought of the collection box for the carrots the children were carrying..