3Patti Rooml

3Patti Rooml download +128k CHAPTER VIII.—BETTY VISITS THE CITY OF HER DREAMS.,[32]“There are other things besides gems, little girl.” Mrs. Bennett smiled and began to clear the table.,The child had been content to extract but fleeting moments of sweetness from the confection and as the weeks passed had in the time-honored custom kept the canes shining. Thus accumulated quite a bagful of the tempting sweets. These she sold to a haughty plutocrat at school for a dime. This coin of the realm made a pleasing clatter in her wooden box; but she reflected, not without some degree of logic, that ten cents would not go very far in carrying salvation to the suffering heathen in Africa.,Billy could not remember that he had.,“Billy, I don’t like the look of your eyes; you’re reading too much at night,” his mother said one evening when he was helping with the dishes. “You must go to bed earlier.”，“Sour’s licked me ’cause I’m a n-nigger, ’n gave T-Twinnies some f-flowers an’ walked with ’em. He’s back there now l-lickin’ the T-Twins.”，And if the girls don’t love me now，“It was all splendid; and, Billy, I never dreamed it was in you! Sister’s operetta would have been a failure if it hadn’t been for you.”“You and Edith are fairies,” he said when his mother came again to the room, “to rustle such pretty togs for the new sister in a night.” His mother was piling his plate again with griddle cakes.

He tidied himself, bade his mother good-bye, and followed the girls to rehearsal.,Once Billy’s attention was fixed he was as earnest at work as at play. He slaughtered the weeds rapidly, and had several clean beds behind him when his mother called him to breakfast.,“Where is my cap?” With his free hand he felt his bare head. Looking around the luckless boy saw his headgear in the middle of the font and turned to rescue it. The water became deeper, until he stood in it almost to his arm-pits.,“The bulliest time yet!” shouted Charley from the street.,“Don’t Betty look jist too sweet,” she murmured when she had finally located the child, “Her hair looks as ef she had got tangled up in the milky way an’ there was nothin’ on it but star-dust.”,“Suppose you go down to the creek,” she replied with a peculiar smile. “May Nell and the twins went there some time ago. Harold, too.”,“Hooray, Billy! Thirteen to-morrow! But this is the day we celebrate!”,“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.,“It certainly is wonderful,” agreed Nell with perfect truth.,Once Billy’s attention was fixed he was as earnest at work as at play. He slaughtered the weeds rapidly, and had several clean beds behind him when his mother called him to breakfast.,“I can walk,” she said, struggling to be put down.,“Ma! Mamma Bennett,” he burst out as he banged open the door; “she’s coming,—our little earthquake girl! The cutest kid,—not so big as the twins, but stylisher in the face.”.