United States or Uzbekistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The two he slipped into a large envelope. The very fat boy stood before him. "Want to make a quarter, Pudge? Take this letter, right now, to Mrs. George Remington. Give it to her personally. It's the old Remington place, you know." He felt in his change pocket. It was empty. He hesitated, turned to Evans, then, reconsidering, produced a dollar bill from another pocket and gave it to the boy.
'You used to say that it was everything for a man to look after his own interests. 'And I do look after them. Pudge and I will go and have a look at every beast tomorrow, and I shall look very wise and pretend to know more about it than he does. In stock-farming the chief thing is not to have too many beasts.
At the moment the fountain had but one patron a remarkably fat boy of, perhaps, fifteen, with plump cheeks and drooping mouth.... The row of windows across the second floor front of the building, above Humphrey's, bore, each, the legend Remington and Evans, Attorneys at Law. The fat boy was Percival Sheridan, otherwise Pudge.
It had still attached to its rim a bit of the ribbon by which it had been fastened to his sister's shopping bag, from which, if the truth must be told, he had surreptitiously detached it. Pretending to consult it, as though it were some sort of pocket oracle, Pudge flashed back, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing a bright fleck of light travel across the shutter.
"If what, Mister Sheridan?" " if, oh well, just charge it." Billy Simmons paused in the act of reaching for a sundae glass. The smile left his face. Pudge, though he did not once look up from that absorbing little operation with the fat forefinger, felt this pause and knew that Billy's grin had gone; and his own mouth drooped and drooped. It was a tense moment.
Six years off... and Billy Simmons in his white apron, was waiting now, on the other side of the marble counter, for his order and grinning as he waited. Six years! Why, Pudge would be a man then too old for nut sundaes and chocolate frappés, too far gone down the sober slope of life to enjoy anything!
"Beggin' yer pardon, sir," fiercely rejoined Chips who was getting a bit of his own back on Mrs. Pudge "I'm using the nautical expression, sir; she failed to get about when that there dawg" pointing of stub thumb at heedless dog "growled 'cause she has water in the knee.
In the interval of her scrambling up by the aid of the bent bough and such help as he could give her, they had neglected to observe the other woman. Now, as Mrs. Remington's heels drummed on the outside of the fence, Pudge was aware of some commotion in the direction of the house, and saw Miss Eliot running toward him, crying: "Run, run!" while two men pursued her.
Up the narrow stairway he crept peeped into three bedrooms and finally opening the door of what was evidently a storeroom, he found the object of his search. E. Eliot sat in an old splint-bottomed chair gagged, arms tied behind her and to the chair's back, and her ankles tied to the chair's legs. In a moment Pudge had the knotted towel out of her mouth, and had cut her bonds.
But quick though Pudge was, to her he seemed intolerably slow; just then E. Eliot was thinking of only one thing. This was the final afternoon of the campaign and she was away out here, far from all the great things that might be going on. She gave a single stretch of her cramped muscles as she rose. "I know you you're Betty Sheridan's brother thanks," she said briskly. "What time is it?"
Word Of The Day