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And so the priests blessed the cannon, and the people baptized it, and called it Marie-Jeanne, and the women brought out their little children, and sat them straddle-legged across it, whole rows of them at the same time, till the cannon looked like a huge bunch of grapes on which the fruit clustered thickly.
Then he heard a scraping sound behind him, and turned quickly about with pricked ears. Under the house, from the direction of the kitchen, Tommy Earle was crawling toward him on hands and knees. The boy lost no time. He sat up straddle-legged like a tailor, and pulled the dog's head on his knee.
"Why, to this," replied Jephson, seating himself straddle-legged across his chair, and leaning his arms upon the back. "I was told a story this morning at the hospital by an old French doctor. The actual facts are few and simple; all that is known can be read in the Paris police records of sixty-two years ago.
Poised on top of the high rail fence that bordered the road, he looked back. The hound was still trying to follow, walking straddle-legged, head down, all entangled with the taut chain that dragged the heavy block. The boy watched the frantic efforts, pity and longing on his face, then he jumped off the fence inside the pasture and hurried on down the hill, face set straight ahead.
I fairly shouted at this change, for slight though it was, it worked magic, and the queen Atta was a queen no more, but a miniature, straddle-legged aeroplane, pushed into position, and overrun by a crowd of mechanics, putting the finishing touches, tightening the wires, oiling every pliable crevice. A Medium came along, tugged at a leg and the obliging little plane lifted it for inspection.
Her reply was to do as the Arab had done, and seating herself straddle-legged behind Godwin, to clasp him around the middle. "Truly you look a pretty pilgrim now, brother," said Wulf, laughing aloud, while even the grave Arab smiled and Godwin muttered between his teeth the old proverb "Woman on croup, devil on bow."
They asked her if she would not like to ride straddle-legged, and if she had bought her dress from an old Hottentot who had done with it, and if she had been rolling about tipsy in the veldt to get all the mud on it; and generally availed themselves of this unparalleled occasion to be witty at the expense of an English lady in sore distress.
It was the way each of them had of expressing his contempt for the other. As the Colonel negotiated himself around the next corner with the rotary motion of a slightly inebriate straddle-legged old planet, he almost collided with another body which was more nearly spherical and which had apparently no legs at all, only two wide-toed "Old Lady's Comforts" showing beneath the hem of her dress.
On such occasions, he would possibly be occupied in the inspiriting task of dragging a dead sheep after his horse, to make a trail to lead the wild dogs up to some poisoned meat; while the lady, clad in light and airy garments, with a huge white sunbonnet for head-gear, would be riding straddle-legged in search of strayed cows.
'And I'm an actor; but, I beg your pardon, stage-managing's more my business, news that seemed to cast a gloom over the faces of the ministers; and leaving them to make what they could of his reply, he drew Kate forward confidentially and pointed to an old man sitting straddle-legged on a high narrow table just on a line with the window.
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