|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 28
"I've seen 'em jump just like that," broke in Uncle Henry. "A two-three-
hundred-pound stag go up over a four-foot fence just like a piece of
thistledown in the wind."
"Uncle Henry," asked Elizabeth Ann, "what is a copse?"
"I don't know," said Uncle Henry indifferently. "Something in the woods,
must be. Underbrush most likely. You can always tell words you don't
know by the sense of the whole thing. Go on."
And stretching forward, free and far,
The child's voice took up the chant again. She read faster and faster as
it got more exciting. Uncle Henry joined in on
For, jaded now and spent with toil,
Embossed with foam and dark with soil,
While every gasp with sobs he drew,
The laboring stag strained full in view.
The little girl's heart beat fast. She fled along through the next
lines, stumbling desperately over the hard words but seeing the headlong
chase through them clearly as through tree-trunks in a forest. Uncle
Henry broke in in a triumphant shout:
The wily quarry shunned the shock
And TURNED him from the opposing rock;
Then dashing down a darksome glen,
Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
In the deep Trossach's wildest nook
His solitary refuge took.
"Oh MY!" cried Elizabeth Ann, laying down the book. "He got away, didn't
he? I was so afraid he wouldn't!"
"I can just hear those dogs yelping, can't you?" said Uncle Henry.
Yelled on the view the opening pack.
"Sometimes you hear 'em that way up on the slope of Hemlock Mountain
back of us, when they get to running a deer."
"What say we have some pop-corn!" suggested Aunt Abigail. "Betsy, don't
you want to pop us some?"
"I never DID," said the little girl, but in a less doubtful tone than
she had ever used with that phrase so familiar to her. A dim notion was
growing up in her mind that the fact that she had never done a thing was
no proof that she couldn't.
"I'll show you," said Uncle Henry. He reached down a couple of ears from
a big yellow cluster hanging on the wall, and he and Betsy shelled them
into the popper, popped it full of snowy kernels, buttered it, salted
it, and took it back to the table.
It was just as she was eating her first ambrosial mouthful that the door
opened and a fur-capped head was thrust in. A man's voice said:
"Evenin', folks. No, I can't stay. I was down at the village just now,
and thought I'd ask for any mail down our way." He tossed a newspaper
and a letter on the table and was gone.
The letter was addressed to Elizabeth Ann and it was from Aunt Frances.
She read it to herself while Uncle Henry read the newspaper. Aunt
Frances wrote that she had been perfectly horrified to learn that Cousin
Molly had not kept Elizabeth Ann with her, and that she would never
forgive her for that cruelty. And when she thought that her darling was
at Putney Farm ... ! Her blood ran cold. It positively did! It was too
dreadful. But it couldn't be helped, for a time anyhow, because Aunt
Harriet was really VERY sick. Elizabeth Ann would have to be a dear,
brave child and endure it as best she could. And as soon ... oh, as soon
as ever she COULD, Aunt Frances would come and take her away from them.
"Don't cry TOO much, darling ... it breaks my heart to think of you there!
TRY to be cheerful, dearest! TRY to bear it for the sake of your
distracted, loving Aunt Frances."
Elizabeth Ann looked up from this letter and across the table at Aunt
Abigail's rosy, wrinkled old face, bent over her darning. Uncle Henry
laid the paper down, took a big mouthful of pop-corn, and beat time
silently with his hand. When he could speak he murmured: An hundred dogs
bayed deep and strong, Clattered an hundred steeds along.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|