United States or British Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The reflected light from the glimmering pond lit up the small, wizened countenance, and for the first time he noted the signs it bore of cruel suffering and ill usage. "Another," he said, half aloud. "What?" asked Tim, glad to have elicited even one word. The man did not repeat it. "Where do you live?" he asked. "Up at Jake Sawyer's. I'm one o' the Sawyer orphants, I told you."
"It's Clay Levins, boys!" said Barkwell. "They've plugged him! Do you reckon we've got to go back to Levins' shack an' tell his wife that we let them skunks get away after makin' orphants of her kids?" "I'm jumpin'!" shrieked Jud Weaver, his voice coming chokingly with passion. "I ain't waitin' one damned minute for any palaver! Either them deputies is wiped out, or I am!"
"Well!" exclaimed the exasperated village manager, as she stumbled through the Sawyers' lumpy garden, "what we've got to do 'fore we can raise them orphants, is to raise them two old fools they've got for a father and mother, and I guess it's about fifty years too late!" Not till the still unchastened orphans were in bed and asleep did Jake again broach the subject of corporal punishment.
After that, when the mill stopped work at sundown, there was a council held, amid the suddenly silent saws. "What's to be done about the orphants?" was the way Jimmy Wright put the problem. Black Angus MacAllister, the Boss so called to distinguish him from Red Angus, one of the gang of log-drivers had his ideas already pretty well formed on the subject, and intended that his ideas should go.
'Cause you might as well trot 'em out. But the matron she laughs, an' says that was all, and were we sure we could adopt so many. Jake says, 'I dunno, I'm sure, says he, 'but it seems as if they'd adopted us, and we can't help ourselves. That set everybody laughin', 'stead o' cryin', an' we picked up them four orphants an' brought them home last night, an' here we are."
Suddenly he thought of a remark that had hitherto never failed to arouse the liveliest interest in a new acquaintance. "I'm one o' the Sawyer orphants," he announced proudly. The dark man looked no whit impressed. He made no reply, and Tim gained courage to sidle up closer, and finally seated himself, in an insinuating manner, on the extreme end of a piece of timber that lay before the door.
"Why, what is it?" asked Mother with a guarded interest and no small amount of anxiety, for she was accustomed to the kind of news that Mrs. Peavey usually took the trouble to spread. "Well, I knowed what was a-going to happen when I seen Bettie Pratt setting the chairs straight and marshaling in the orphants at poor Mis' Hoover's funeral, not but eleven months ago.
Again we felt that indefinable thrill never separate from the strange utterance, suggestive always of some dark mystery, and fascinating and holding the childish fancy in complete control. "Bet you don't know this-'un neether: 'A holler-hearted father, And a hump-back mother Three black orphants All born together! " We were dumb. "You can't guess nothin'!" she said half pityingly.
"De way I looks at it, dey ain't no use handin' out sense to a nigger ef he ain't got no place to put it. 'Sides, dese things offen-times turns out fur de best; orphants leaves de fewest mourners. Good-by, Red Hoss, an' kindly give my reguards to any frien's of mine dat you meets up wid on 'yother side of Jordan."
Word Of The Day