United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then a fly lit on the barber's nose and he slapped at it, and the slap missed the fly but did not miss the nose. The barber was irritated. At this moment his birdlike eye gleamed a gleam as it fell upon customers approaching: the prettiest little girl in the world, leading by the hand her baby brother, Mitchy-Mitch, coming to have Mitchy-Mitch's hair clipped, against the heat.
Spontaneously there were grand and awful effects volcanic spectacles of nightmare and eruption. A black sheet of eccentric shape rose out of the caldron and descended upon the three children, who had no time to evade it. After it fell, Mitchy-Mitch, who stood nearest the caldron, was the thickest, though there was enough for all. Br'er Rabbit would have fled from any of them.
He threw back his head, lifted his eyes dreamily, as he had seen real musicians lift theirs, and distended the accordion preparing to produce the wonderful calf-like noise which was the instrument's great charm. But the distention evoked a long wail which was at once drowned in another one. "Ow! Owowaoh! Wowohah! WaowWOW!" shrieked Mitchy-Mitch and the accordion together.
"Go on, Mitchy-Mitch," cried Marjorie. "He can't do a thing. He don't DARE! Say it some more, Mitchy-Mitch say it a whole lot!" Mitchy-Mitch, his small, fat face shining with confidence in his immunity, complied. "'Ittle gellamun!" he squeaked malevolently. "'Ittle gellamun! 'Ittle gellamun! 'Ittle gellamun!"
Mitchy-Mitch immediately stopped crying and gazed upon his benefactor with the eyes of a dog. This world! Thereafter did Penrod with complete approval from Mitchy-Mitch play the accordion for his lady to his heart's content, and hers. Never had he so won upon her; never had she let him feel so close to her before.
In the distance he saw Marjorie coming in pink again, with a ravishing little parasol over her head. And alone! No Mitchy-Mitch was to mar this meeting. Penrod increased the feebleness of his steps, now and then leaning upon the fence as if for support. "How do you do, Marjorie?" he said, in his best sick-room voice, as she came near.
He had paid twenty-two cents for the accordion, and fifteen for candy; he had bought the mercenary heart of Mitchy-Mitch for two: it certainly follows that there remained to him of his dollar, sixty-one cents a fair fortune, and most unusual.
Unexpectedly, she smote again with results and then, seizing the indistinguishable hand of Mitchy-Mitch, she ran wailing homeward down the street. "'Little gentleman'?" said Georgie Bassett, with some evidences of disturbed complacency. "Why, that's what they call ME!" "Yes, and you ARE one, too!" shouted the maddened Penrod. "But you better not let anybody call ME that!
Marjorie moved inadvertently; whereupon Mitchy-Mitch pounced upon the remains of his jaw-breaker and restored them, with accretions, to his mouth. His sister, uttering a cry of horror, sprang to the rescue, assisted by Penrod, whom she prevailed upon to hold Mitchy-Mitch's mouth open while she excavated.
With a cautious gesture he offered a jaw-breaker to Mitchy-Mitch, who snatched it indignantly and set about its absorption without delay. "Can you play on that?" asked Marjorie, with some difficulty, her cheeks being rather too hilly for conversation. "Want to hear me?" She nodded, her eyes sweet with anticipation. This was what he had come for.
Word Of The Day