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The shadows of evening had fallen, and the corners of the long, low, wood-panelled room were draped in darkness. The sputtering wood fire threw out a circle of red flickering light which played over the little group of wayfarers, and showed up every line and shadow upon their faces.
With much panting and sputtering and popping the car started slowly forward and they were off. Neither spoke. They came to an intersecting street and Zeke slowed down the car. "Which way, Mist' Joe?" he asked. Joe was suddenly irritated. "To Fillmore. You know where I mean. Wherever you've been going for the stuff."
"Duchess, you and this wild young thing spread the banquet-table while I wash up." He disappeared into a corner shut off by burlap curtains. From within there issued the sound of splashing water and the sputtering roar of snatches of the Toreador's song in a very big and very bad baritone. Maggie put out a hand, and kept the Duchess from rising. "Sit still I'll fix the table."
"Help me! I'm in the water!" she screamed, coming up sputtering and coughing. "Stay there and push," answered Harriet, laughing so that she bumped the nose of the houseboat into the bank on the right side of the creek. "You can't get any wetter. The water is shallow. Come. Don't hold up the ship." Tommy had no intention of pushing. Her sole ambition at this moment was to get aboard.
The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of the class. "Louder!" cried the master; "louder!" The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone in the word "Charbovari."
It was indeed a hard and heavy tug; and I had pretty tough work, what between the exertion of the ascent, and the incessant fits of laughter into which I was thrown by the grotesquely agile movements of fat Tom; who, grunting, panting, sputtering, and launching forth from time to time the strangest and most blasphemously horrid oaths, contrived to make way to the summit faster than either of us crashing through the dense underwood of juniper and sumac, uprooting the oak saplings as he swung from this to that, and spurning down huge stones upon us, as we followed at a cautious distance.
For several seconds the roar of the cataract sounded in my ears with a furious faintness, as though it were at a great distance; then I felt the air again and a sudden cessation of motion. I opened my eyes, choking and sputtering. For a time I could see nothing; then I made out Desiree's form, and Harry's, stretched behind me on the raft. At the same instant Harry's voice came: "Paul!
And that night, while the celebration was in full swing and the new electric lights were sputtering and hissing in honor of Jefferson Worth, a loaded wagon, drawn by four mules, quietly left the rear of the Worth store. On the driver's seat sat Pablo.
All this gloomy atmosphere might have been changed for the better had there been a big, cheery open wood fire snapping and blazing away, sputtering out its good morning as you entered and there would have been if any one of the real inmates had insisted upon it fought for it, if necessary; or if in summer one could have seen through the curtained windows a stretch of green grass with here and there a tree, or one or two twisted vines craning their necks to find out what was going on inside; or if in any or all seasons, a wholesome, happy-hearted, sunny wife looking like a bunch of roses just out of a bath, had sat behind the smoking coffee-urn, inquiring whether one or two lumps of sugar would be enough; or a gladsome daughter who, in a sudden burst of affection, had thrown her arms around her father's neck and kissed him because she loved him, and because she wanted his day and her day to begin that way: if, I say, there had been all, or one-half, or one-quarter of these things, the atmosphere of this sepulchral interior might have been improved but there wasn't.
He forgot his shame in having a mother who ran an iron-mill; he even forgot that impudent thrust in the ribs; a spark of sympathy leaped between them as real in its invisibility as the white glitter of the molten iron sputtering over their heads. "Yes," he said, "it's all that, and it is magnificent, too!" "Come on!" she said, with a proud look.
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