altermate

altermate Download +128K - V5.4.1 “Ten? You won’t think of playing with us, then. Ma thought you’d be just our age.”,Moses regretted a hundred times his refusal to grant Betty’s request for two bits. He had since offered it and had tried to thrust it on her, but injured pride could not thus be appeased.,Not unwillingly the boy relinquished his task. Weeding after all is thankless work. The weeds will persist in growing in spite of every discouragement.,“Maria, where is St. Elmo?” asked Mrs. Mifsud, as with flushed face she basted some fowls in the oven.,“I might as well tell you all about it, Mrs. Wopp,” confessed Howard. “When I got to town and found the train was almost due, I felt frightfully shy. So I got Ken Judson to put on his boiled shirt and Sunday suit and go to the station. He looked the part, I assure you, much better than I would. He brought Miss Gordon to ‘The Golden West’ where I had recovered sufficiently to speak to her.”，Howard Eliot guided his charges through the mazes of the city to a restaurant. Moses with the perennial appetite of fourteen ate silently and steadily, not omitting one item on the menu. He gorged.，Picking up a second paper at random, “This is a composition on Alfred the Great,” he explained.，St. Elmo cast about in his mind for some plausible explanation of his recent panic. It would never do to inform the world that he had been afraid of a mere turkey.“An’ well I know who’s makin’ him stew an’ chomp. You needn’t try to deceive yer, Mar,” chided the knowing matron.

“Not many of us would, Mrs. Wopp,” remarked Mrs. Bliggins, a small fair woman with a round placid countenance. “What with cookin’, an’ washin’, an’ cleanin’, an’ buttermakin’, an’ hundreds of other things, there’s not much time for fancy work.”,NEITHER boy nor dog paused till they came to the dusty road. There Bouncer stopped and ran excitedly about the spot where the big man had taken May Nell in his arms; doubled back on his track, stopped again, and looked up at Billy, perplexity written all over his face. Billy encouraged him with word and caress; but he came at last, put his nose against Billy’s knee, and whined apologetically.,“Hev you ever hed a toothache an’ orl at onct it bust an’ stopped achin’? Well, no matter what trouble yer in, jist a sight o’ Betty’s like that.”,The door opened and Betty, who had stayed in school to clean the blackboard for “teacher,” appeared. She came in bringing with her the very essence of outdoor freshness and buoyancy.,Miss Gordon complied, then followed the old favorite with a two-step played in as sprightly a manner as the organ would allow.,How sweet and dear they all were! How peaceful it looked in there,—too peaceful, clean, for a dirty, fighting brute like himself. What could he do? He shivered in the cold, and the pain in his eyes increased. Would he fall? Would they find him, have Doctor Carter, learn the disgraceful truth? If the world had looked dark that afternoon, it was now Egyptian blackness.,“Hurry up, Moses,” she called, as soon as her joy had subsided, “git those pipes finished an’ go arfter yor chores.”,“A deed to the stone house, the Ha’nt, May Nell calls it. I was glad to know of something you wanted; and I’ll furnish the money to redeem the place to your idea of the beauty it deserves. It is a splendid location. And Mrs. Bennett,” he turned to Billy’s mother, “you must let me see Billy through college.”,The child seeing the twinkle in the older eyes, laughed aloud; and, wrapped in a voluminous apron, began the first task that had ever left its stain on her pretty fingers.,While Betty, mounted on a bench in the shed, was getting down her watering-can, Job, who during the afternoon had searched diligently but vainly for her, rounded the corner of the garden fence. He noted the open gate and sped towards it. As he entered the garden his eye fell on St. Elmo who stood absorbed and expectant. The turkey, his odd corner-wise gait accentuated by his anxiety of mind, rushed towards the child who at first did not notice his approach. But presently, turning around, St. Elmo beheld an apparently formidable assailant which by the most powerful flight of imagination could not be mistaken for a fairy. All escape by way of the gate was shut off by the intruder. St. Elmo’s plump legs, bare above his low socks, twinkled as he ran wildly towards the foot of the garden.,“Then I’ll be a—a preacher if I ought to. But gee! it’s rocky!”,“Please, Mister, my nose was bleedin’ an’ I lorst my way lookin’ fer warter, an’ here I am on Jording’s stormy banks.”.