MSL

MSL Earn money by referring friends - V4.3.9 CHAPTER XVII BILLY TO-DAY,“Well, well, you don’t say!”,“There’s no mention of circus-ladies going there anyway,” said Howard, smiling. This reference to her attempts to out-barnum Barnum brought a bright smile to the wan face of Betty.,“Wisht that orful pitcher ’d fall inter the swill-pail an’ then turn a somerset in the soot-pile,” murmured the boy as he noticed the care exercised over its safety.,CHAPTER V.—A DANCE IN THE CEDAR HILLS.，“A doctor’s wife gets over ‘expecting’ very young, Billy. They won’t think I’m dead if I don’t come home to lunch. But your mother?” His inflection finished the question.，Yet the impression of the night had been deep enough to wake him before the sun rose. He dressed quickly, astonished the chickens with an early breakfast; put fresh sand in the coop; climbed the windmill tower to oil the bearings of the big wheel; and put the lawn mower in order, but remembered in time that to use it would wake the sleepers.，Mrs. Bennett was setting the table. She put down a pile of plates, and a new anxiety came into her careworn face. “A child? I told Mr. Patton I couldn’t take one.”“Mind? What do you mean by that? Anyway, you can’t prove it.”

“What’s the trouble, dear? What were you afraid of?” she enquired, as she raised him to his feet.,“This here dorg is clean tuckered out,” she declared, “ef he swallered a green pea, you’d see it goin’ down orl the way.”,They were a happy lot. Each held some high-sounding position, the name coined in Billy’s busy brain. His box of abused tools came forth; the much mended wheelbarrow, picks, shovels wobbly from use as well as abuse, improvised things that only an imagination as large as Billy’s could have named tools,—something for each one there.,Off they bounded, side by side, through the fragrant spring evening. The red of the western sky touched to brighter rosiness their glowing cheeks, tinted Jean’s wind-blown hair with gold. As they neared the town she shot ahead in a last ambitious spurt, wheeled and faced him as he came up.,There was a strange weight in his left side, like lead. He felt as if the whole world was against him; and the future looked dark and terrible. Three days ago life had reached out, a white shining road to success. Only three days! He looked north to where clouds were shutting down over the Mountain, gray to-day, not blue. The Mountain, every one called it, for it closed the valley and towered, a sentinel, far above all other mountains in view. Billy thought that stood for him; he was to be chained to this narrow valley all his life; struggle as he might he should never be free.,Diligently as Betty had tended this little garden, it was considered to be a family possession, the child’s own particular treasures lying beyond its fragrant border. Her cherished morning-glories and climbing nasturtiums found a welcome support in the old wooden fence.,“Oh, Mr. Sheriff, you won’t send me off now, will you, when the business is just beginning?”,He went on, a little cautiously now, and shortly came in view of the “Ha’nt,” a sinister though imposing house, built of cut stone, close against the face of the most picturesque mountain of the range, bounding Vina Valley. The windows were curtained with cobwebs and dust. For years the wide front door had been nailed up with the same sun-bleached boards; and “Keep out!” spoke from every gray splinter.,Moses came to the kitchen door pushing an untemperamental-looking wheel-barrow with a leg in splints, that is, a leg of the vehicle. The barrow was filled with carrots. He was accompanied by Job and Henry. Behind him trooped a merry laughing group of expectant children.,“Jimmy, can you stand?”,It had stopped raining, but was still cloudy. This was the hour when Billy usually wheeled long miles by himself, dreaming dreams no one but a boy knows how to dream. Nothing short of a downpour ever hindered him; thus mother and sister knew it was genuine self-sacrifice that kept him beside the little girl through the long afternoon.,Yet it was very strange, they were all happy! Happier, she felt, than her own mother with maids and money, gems, rich gowns, and her motor car at command. Why was it? “Those that won’t work shouldn’t eat.” Could that be true? Then she should not eat, for she never worked. She wondered how it would seem to work..