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Then the people began to come in, and Tode was just about to get up and sit on the seat, when a lady and a little girl entered the pew. The boy groaned inwardly. "They'll screech if I get up now," he thought. "Nothin' for it but to lay here till it's over. Wal', I c'n hear him anyhow."
A lingering wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches in the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon ill-balanced on its roosting-bough.
Listening to this, he feared to move lest he should wake from a summer-night's dream. A ragged little shadow flitted down the path behind him, and from a solitary apple-tree, standing like a lonely ghost in the middle of the field, came the woo of a screech owl twice. It was answered twice from a clump of elder-bushes that grew in a fence-corner fifty yards west of the pasture bars.
With a prefatory screech, In a florid Western speech, Said the engine from the West, "I am from Sierra's crest, And if Altitudes' a test, Why I reckon its confessed, That I've done my level best." "Said the engine from the East, They who work best, talk the least, Suppose you whistle down your brakes, What you're done is no great shakes.
Anything might happen. What did she come for? She was part of the general scheme of his misfortune. He half expected that she would rush at him, pull his hair, and scratch his face. Why not? Anything might happen! In an exaggerated sense of his great bodily weakness he felt somewhat apprehensive of possible assault. At any rate, she would scream at him. He knew her of old. She could screech.
"Well, you've got a real faculty at takin' things easy; now I'm one of the feelin' kind. I set down often and often to knit, and get a-thinkin' over times back, and things people said and did years ago, and how bad I felt, till I feel jest so ag'in, and I get a-cryin' till it seems as though I should screech right out, and I can't sleep, nor I can't do nothing."
Arter the wibration had run through him a little time, he would screech out, "Toby, I feel my property coming grind away! I'm counting my guineas by thousands, Toby grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I'm swelling out into the Bank of England!" Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind.
The child's voice first reached them in a sudden screech then there was a confused noise resembling a scuffle and Jan was again heard crying aloud for help, while at the same time his voice was interrupted, and each call appeared to come from a greater distance! Something or somebody was carrying him off! This idea occurred to Von Bloom, Hans, and Hendrik, at the same instant.
He flung himself flat and waited; looking at his wrist-watch he noted that his arm was soaked with blood. He thought: 'A wound! Now I shall go home. Thank God! Oh, Noel! The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear them even through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire. 'The beastly things! he thought: A voice beside him gasped out: "It's lifted, sir."
Such was the wrought-up condition of his nerves, that when a branch which some one had held back, and then let slip, came in contact with the shins of Noodles, he gave out a screech, and began dancing around like mad. "Snakes! and as big as your wrist too! I saw 'em!" he called out, forgetting to talk in his usual broken English way, because of his excitement.
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