United States or Palau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One day, as I came homewards along the road, with my books under my arm, she was sitting in her blue-checked frock and straw hat, on the steps by the side of the gate. She looked as if she were in a very bad temper, and I could see at once that I was in for something.
"What's that, Mr. Ellsworth?" the woman from Kansas came out and inquired; for she knew better than he what that meant. "Sheriff? Was he a tall, slim man, longish mustache, sorter thin?" Ellsworth nodded; the woman wiped her hands on her blue-checked apron. Constance glanced at her serious face, and wondered. "Then it's Ben Stillson," the woman from Kansas said, "the sheriff of Blanco.
Money he had none; and, beyond the dirty fearnought blue seaman's jacket which he wore, a pair of trousers of the coarse cloth of the country, an old black vest that had seen better days, and two blue-checked shirts, clothes he had none. He shaved but once a week, never combed his hair, and never washed himself.
"I have a presentiment that we shall find in the valley of Biban el Molûk a tomb intact," said to a high-bred-looking young Englishman a much more humble personage who was wiping, with a big, blue-checked handkerchief, his bald head, on which stood drops of perspiration, just as if it had been made of porous clay and filled with water like a Theban water-jar.
She wore a blue-checked calico apron that came to her throat, but the apron was clean, and her firm though furrowed face gave evidences of recent housewifely exertions. Her eyes had the strange look of the cheerfulness that is intimately acquainted with sorrow. She did not seem surprised at seeing me. "I have come to ask about Mr. Krebs," I told her.
Fingers poke through cold holes in the wool mittens; the old coat with two buttons gone flaps and blows about the knees; dirt, old papers, spiral upward on the chill gusts of a raw winter day. Close your eyes, duck your head, and hurry on. Under one arm is clutched the paper bag with lunch and the blue-checked apron. Under the other the old brown-leather bag.
Immediately after dinner, little Johnny Buffum appeared in the door-yard and announced that he had come to play with Prue. He wore a blue-checked pinafore, below which could be seen his short snuff-colored trousers and little bare feet. Upon his head jauntily sat a large straw hat with a torn brim through which the sunlight sifted, where it lay, a stripe of gold upon his little freckled nose.
Her romantic coming and her romantic name pleased him; and, too, he thought her beautiful. She was scarcely more than a girl, slim and strong and almost of his own height. She was barefooted, but her blue-checked gingham was clean and belted smartly about a small waist. He remembered only one woman who ran as lithely as she did, one of the numerous "diving beauties" of the vaudeville stage.
Then in eager haste she drew out of her pocket she still wore her old, short, blue-checked, every-day dress, but her hair "in grown-up fashion" a cross of small, blue beads. She also drew from her pocket a silk cord which I was to wear round my neck nearest my heart. With some further trouble she produced from the pocket that contained so much, a small pair of scissors.
So when their leaving day came Sister Helen Vincula put a clean stiff-starched blue-checked apron on Bessie Bell, and they walked together to the Mall where the band was playing. Bessie Bell was always so glad when Sister Helen Vincula took her to the Mall in the afternoon when the band played.
Word Of The Day