United States or Eritrea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Come out to the kitchen, dear, and let me chuck you to the ceiling," I said, just to encourage her; "I always do it to little girls; and then they can see the hams and bacon." But Uncle Reuben burst out laughing; and Ruth turned away with a deep rich colour. "Do you know how old she is, you numskull?" said Uncle Ben, in his dryest drawl; "she was seventeen last July, sir."
The "Sary Ann," stranded upon the shoals of Numskull Nob, to which she had been swept by the gale, lay without mast or rudder, leaking at every joint. The two old salts surveyed the scene for a moment in stoic silence, realizing all it meant to them. But Brother Bart, with the sunlight dancing on the waves, the rainbow arching the sky, broke into eager, hopeful speech.
Can't you imagine him bald as a coot, with a pair of sponge-bag trousers, a little spotted tie, and a corporation?" After a pause Hirst remarked that the worst infamy had still to be told. He addressed himself to Helen. "They've hoofed out the prostitute. One night while we were away that old numskull Thornbury was doddering about the passages very late.
"Well! you numskull, why don't you make off with you, and bring something for the gentlemen to drink?" Tim stood fast till interrogated a second time, and then replied with perfect gravity that "there wasn't another drop of wine in the house." Upon this the master got up in a rage, and brushing past the servant, declared his intention of searching the cellar himself.
She whispered and said, "Put up those wicked cards this minute! two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other fellow's got a flush!" I never have gambled from that day to this never once without a "cold deck" in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games that are being played unless I deal myself.
He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.
With a flaming face and a nervous rush of racy words which made me think that if I closed my eyes I should be back on the steps of the church in Rome talking to Martin himself, he told me I was mistaken if I thought his friend was a numskull, for he had had "the biggest brain-pan in College Green," and the way he could learn things when he wanted to was wonderful.
And there in Kentucky, when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business, why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel.
O! that there was a lawyer here to serve him with a siserari." Then fixing his eyes upon Ferret, he proceeded: "An't you a limb of the law, friend? No, I cry you mercy, you look more like a showman or a conjurer." Ferret, nettled at this address, answered, "It would be well for you, that I could conjure a little common sense into that numskull of yours."
He groped for words, but, having no genius in invention, he blurted the truth helplessly: "I came to ask you if you wouldn't You see, my poor wife isn't making out very well with people she's lonesome and blue and why can't you lend a hand and make friends with her?" Charity laughed aloud. "Oh, Jim, Jim, what a darling old numskull you are!" "In general, yes; but why just now?"
Word Of The Day