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Read Ebook: Linda Carlton's Hollywood Flight by Lavell Edith
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Ebook has 68 lines and 2232 words, and 2 pages
"Some rascals were in my garden last night," said Mr. Mustard, "to the overturning of my potted geraniums. The size of his boot was a number six, like what are sold at Provost Yarrow's shop. I will flog all the boys with number six boots bought at The Shop, unless the culprit confesses. Show boots."
We showed them, putting them, as commanded, on the wooden desks with a clatter that made the ink leap in the dirty bottles. We did that on purpose.
"Quiet, boys, till I compare them," said Mr. Mustard. "Stand out, you--Tommy Bottle--you have on number six!"
"Don't answer me, sir!" cried Mr. Mustard; "how dare you? Bring me the long cane!"
"Thomas Bottle, your punishment is doubled!" shouted the master, bringing the pointer down across Tommy's legs, as a kind of "lick and a promise." He needn't. Tommy knew well enough what was coming.
"If you please, Mr. Mustard," I called out, "it was me that sold Tommy's father that pair of boots this morning in my father's shop, so Tommy couldn't have broken your flowerpots last night, with these boots on his feet!"
The others provided with our sixes were, to wit, Frederick Allen, Widow Allen's boy; Bob Grey, Eben Pringle, and Dorky Cobb--all poor boys.
"If you punish Fred and Bob and Eben and Dorky, you must whip me, too, Mr. Mustard," I said. "And I shall have to tell my father, and he won't like it, because nobody will come any more to our shop to buy boots, if they are to be punished for it at school!"
I always called him Mr. Mustard, because I was the only boy in the school who dared do it, and I knew he hated it. But, you see, he was afraid of my father. Most people in Breckonside were afraid of my father.
So I got them off at that time; but presently the master welted Bob Grey for making a noise, though he knew perfectly well it was I who had done it. And the lesson was not over before he had got even with the lot of them--Fred and Eben and Dorky and all--except me, of course.
I was always first on my bench; and that was the highest in the school. You see, I wore the best coat, and Mr. Mustard got all his provisions, his stationery, his coals, his bacon from my father's shop; and he was supposed to settle his account once a year. He gave my father a little honey in exchange, when it was the time to draw the sections off from the hives, but he never paid very much money.
So I could stay away from school when I liked, and so long as my father did not find out, no harm ever came. Mr. Mustard never asked a question. He took it for granted that I had been sent somewhere to look after some of my father's little businesses. The boys knew this, and used to get me to take them into school if they were late or had been "kipping"--girls, too, sometimes; though they did not play truant regularly, as we did. It was a good thing in Breckonside to be my father's son.
Just after Scripture reading and catechism, if the vicar did not come to examine us--which was not often--we had half an hour's play, while the "Dissenters" had multiplication table and Troy weight, to keep them aware of themselves. So, while Mr. Mustard was rubbing his spectacles and telling us not to be longer away than half an hour, I took out my quill gun and cut a smart pellet with the end of it out of a slice of potato. Then I cut another with the opposite muzzle, and with my pretty, tiny ramrod I shot it under the desk. It took the end of Mr. Mustard's nose neatly, making a red bull's-eye, for which Freddy Allen was promptly whipped, because his mother was a widow and had no influence with the School Committee.
"I expect it is because I love them!" she said. But privately I thought it was because of Elsie. She was ever such a nice girl, Elsie Stennis, and I had kept friends with her, steady, ever since she came to Breckonside from Thorsby. For she is a town girl, Elsie, and her father and mother are dead. But no nonsense about her--no love and stuff. She was what they call pretty, too, but not set up about it in the least, the way girls get. You would have liked her just as I did. Nearly every one did--except her grandfather.
Well, when I got to Nance Edgar's cottage, which stands back a bit from the road, with a joiner's yard at one side, and the road to Bewick stretching away on the other, I saw Elsie at the gable window. She had a book in her hand, her finger between the leaves. "Come down, Elsie," I called up to her. "I'm not going to school to-day. Come and see the new greenhouses they are building over at Rushworth Court. I can get you a ride in a dogcart all the way. Our man Jake is going with a cargo of paint. Father has the order."
But Elsie wouldn't. She said that it was all very well for me, who was going to be as rich as ever was, to "kip," but that she meant to learn, even though Mr. Mustard was a brute.
I said that was nonsense, and that I would give her half of all I had. At any rate I urged her to come down now. And just at that moment as I was speaking, she pointed over my shoulder. From the gable window she could see something I could not.
"Do look--what's that?" she cried. And her voice so
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