United States or Niue ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


By George, old Ram, I'm gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!" He administered a resounding slap to his comrade's shoulder. "It certainly looks as if our big days were walking toward us!" He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a new and greater portent.

Braden took it, with more swinging bows, and a sweep of his floppy headgear. "Glad t' meet you," he smiled, "Miss-a-a-a-Miss " "Lancaster's they name," prompted the section-boss, all good nature. " Lancaster. Glad t' meet you both." Dallas nodded, and drew her sister away to the wagon-seat in the corner.

And so after that the second little pig was always called Floppy for his ear never stood up again but always hung down like a bell clapper. But the salve soon made it well, and the storekeeper lady gave Floppy and Curly each an ice cream cone.

There were no songs, no boisterous high spirits, no flash riding. In contrast to the plains cowboys, even the herders' appearance was poor. They wore blue jeans overalls, short jeans jumpers, hats floppy and all but disintegrated by age and exposure to the elements.

As they came near, her black eyes sought mine as usual, but I saw only the floppy red ruffle and Marjie. Marjie looked sweet and cool in a fresh starched gingham, with her round white arms bare to the elbows, and her white shapely neck, with its dainty curves and dimples.

A floppy black tie hung down over the lapels of his coat. His black moustache, which seemed to have suffered from the crossing, was drooping, and gave to his mouth a particularly sinister expression. He had a neck of unusual size, and the fat ran in ridges to the back of his scalp, worked up by his collar as he moved his head rapidly with every sentence.

But Floppy got safely home with the other stocking and the cake of chocolate and nothing else happened that night, except that Mrs. Twistytail sent the kind mouse a souvenir postal inviting him to come to the Christmas dinner.

To run down for it I didn't dare. There was no time. All at once my strained, yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the ship's side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed under it. What was that thing? . . . I recognised my own floppy hat. It must have fallen off his head . . . and he didn't bother.

Within a space of some six or seven minutes this precisely was what the nearest street lamp did reveal unto itself as its downward-slanting beams fell upon a furtive, fugitive shape, suggestive in that deficient subradiance of a vastly overgrown forked parsnip, miraculously endowed with powers of locomotion and bound for somewhere in a hurry; excepting of course no forked parsnip, however remarkable in other respects, would be wearing a floppy straw hat in a snowstorm; nor is it likely it would be adorned lengthwise in its rear with a highly decorative design of broad, smooth, polished disks which, even in that poor illumination, gleamed and twinkled and wiggled snakily in and out of alignment, in accord with the movements of their wearer's spinal column.

In my ignorance, and luckily not knowing what was in store for me, I felt immensely proud of my new kit. On the first Sunday after my arrival at school, I arrayed myself with great satisfaction in a big, floppy collar, and my new velvet tunic, amidst the loud jeers of all the other boys in the dormitory.