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Cape Cod Folks. Sarah Pratt McLean Greene
Читать онлайн.Название Cape Cod Folks
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isbn 4064066194314
Автор произведения Sarah Pratt McLean Greene
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
"To pursue directly the cause of my intrusion here," he went on, at length, "this little—well, for present purposes, we will call him the Phenomenon. I confess it is a name to which he is not totally unused. This little phenomenon, whom you see before you, is the youngest but one in a flock of thirteen. Some of that beautiful band—" here Mr. Cradlebow raised a very shaky hand for an instant to his eyes, and although a fitting occasion for sentiment, I was compelled to think of what Grandpa Keeler had said about Godfrey Cradlebow's "sprees"—"some of that beautiful band rest in the graveyard, yonder. Some of them already know what it is themselves to be parents. Some of them still linger in the poor old home nest. I see you have here, my Alvin, and my Wallace, and my youngest, the infant Sophronia. Well, you find them good children, I dare say. Ah! they have an estimable mother." Again, he lifted his hand to his eyes. "Mischievous enough, you find them, probably, but amenable—there it is, amenable—but this lad"—Mr. Cradlebow paused again, shaking his head with a meaning to which he gravely declined further expression.
"What is your name?" I inquired of the little boy, hopefully.
"Simmy B.," he answered revengefully in a tone of alarming hoarseness.
"Such colds as that boy has!" exclaimed the paternal Cradlebow. "They're like all the rest of him—they're phenomenal. There are times when that boy appears to be nothing but one frightful, perambulating cold! Well," he sighed, "and yet it's a strange fact, that the more depraved and miserable a little devil is, the more his mother'll coddle him.
"Now there's this one and my Lute—Luther Larkin—a good boy, but lacking all capacity for rest—always lacking the capacity for rest—uneasy, both of them—always uneasy! but how the mother would give her own rest for them, and seem to love them the better for it! strange! They have always been her idols, too. Well, I have captured Simeon and brought him in. I hope you may keep him. The rest you must learn for yourself. The Lord help me!" he groaned, as he picked up his cane, with evident physical pain, and hobbled cut of the room.
Within the school-room, things resumed their customary, Niagara-like roar, until a lamentable voice rose above the others, and was straightway followed by another voice in indignant explanation.
"Teacher, can't Simmy B. stop? He's puttin' beans down Amber G.'s neck!"
"Simeon!" I exclaimed, in accents calculated to melt that youthful heart of stone, and then added; "I will speak with you a few moments alone, at recess."
Simeon looked no longer helplessly angry as when his father brought him in. He appeared, on the whole, well pleased, but I scanned his angelic features in vain for any trace of repentance.
There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling, sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation. Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and uplifted hands.
"Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil!"
"He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of protruding orbs.
"It wa'n't!" retorted Simeon, flaming with righteous indignation—"It wa'n't but harf a one!"
"He t-t-told me," cried a young scion of the stammering Vickery race, all breathless with excitement, "that he was going to p-p-put it into his m-m-mouth and t-t-take it out of his n-n-nose, and he did and it t-t-t—and it slip-p-ped!"
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