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Perhaps the fact that Mannel came from a home where Russian was the language in use and that he knew little English, accounted for his abnormal seriousness during school hours. He could not be absolutely sure what was being said or what might be done to him. Perhaps some cruel elder brother, before Mannel had even started his education, had explained to him in voluble Russian that dreadful pains and penalties were likely to follow the slightest deviation from the paths of virtue. Certain it is that he kept a close watch on the teacher, and that none of her slightest movements escaped him. Though his general appearance might cause mirth in others, he himself seldom smiled. Day by day he sat in his little front seat grasping slate and pencil in chubby hands, gazing earnestly at the sums on the blackboard as he copied them down. Afterward he worked these with fitting solemnity. To him they appeared to be of the greatest difficulty and of national importance. Sometimes he wrote endless rows of letters on his slate. Sometimes he made nondescript figures out of plasticine or drew patterns on his slate or counted beads. At other times, grievous to relate, when he felt sure the teacher was otherwise engaged and could not possibly see him, he drew fierce triangular cats with four or perhaps five stiff, geometrical legs and rampant tails. It was Mrs. Wopp’s voice. From her remarks one would gather that the rarest perfumes wafted on the winds invoked by Solomon could never seem so sweet to Woppian nostrils as the mingled odor of hay and freshly dug carrots. The chinking began in earnest. Moses stood, turning till each freckle on his ruddy face shone with honest sweat..
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“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.I tried logging in using my phone number and I
was supposed to get a verification code text,but didn't
get it. I clicked resend a couple time, tried the "call
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“Jist as soon’s you finish yer dinner an’ yer noon chores, Moses, I want you to go weed them beets,” instructed Mrs. Wopp. “The weeds is chokin’ them out an’ I see the gophers has been eatin’ some o’ them, too.”
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Conrad
Miss Gordon complied, then followed the old favorite with a two-step played in as sprightly a manner as the organ would allow. “This shore has been a toilin’ day fer me,” sighed Mrs. Wopp, as she opened the oven door and revealed a tempting array of loaves, their brown domes swelling up and over the sides of shining black pans. “He’s been pushin’ up the daisies fer thirty years, I ain’t goin’ to warble to please no tombstun.” Moses swung a ponderous foot to give emphasis to his decision. From the lower slopes of the Cedar Hills issued many wide wooded ravines. Of these none were prettier than Spring Coulee which even in winter retained its attractiveness, having a goodly sprinkling of evergreen trees among the poplars and cottonwoods lining its sides. A grassy level formed the bottom of the coulee. Through the centre of this a little crystal-clear stream, rising in the hills behind and swelled by an occasional spring which gushed from the sides of the ravine, danced over its pebbly bed to join Berry Creek a mile away..
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