Blodgett

“ Blodgett's seems to me of a healthy kind. They make a playmate of him, to a certain extent, but do him no mischief; whereas, the best set of boys in the world would infallibly bring him harm as 260 well as good. His manners improve, and I do not at all despair of seeing him grow up a gentleman. ”

“ George mulled over the sacrifice. Did it mean that Blodgett was so close to the Planters that a merger was possible?
"There's no use," he told Blodgett. "I'm earning practically nothing in your office, because I'm never here. I want to resign."
"Run along, sonny," Blodgett said. "Your salary is a small portion of the profits your infant firm is bringing me. I like you around the office once a day. Old Planter hasn't fired his boy, has he, and he's upstairs all the time, and he's taken over some of the old man's best clerks." ”

“ Davie flushed and stammered, but Blodgett spoke out bitterly.
"So they will, before you or Captain Falk divide with any of the rest. Ah! Red in the face, are ye? That shot told. Davie 'd rather take his chances with a gentleman than be second mate under either one o' you two. He may not know when he's well off, but he knows well when he ain't."
For all Blodgett spoke so boldly, I could see that Davie in his own heart was still afraid of Kipping. But Kipping merely smiled in his mean way and slowly looked us over. ”

“ I do not, I regret to say, know Mr. Blodgett, but he has heard about me and even read my books, and he has a desire—which I find it difficult to resent—to possess my autograph. He wants to place it "in the literary shrine in his library" beside the autographs of "G. K. Chesterton, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne, E. V. Lucas, Lord Northcliffe," and other deities that he apparently worships in far-away Chicago. I yielded to Mr. Blodgett's request, for I am not made of the stern stuff that can turn a deaf ear to flattery. I endeavour to mortify the pride that Mr. ”

“ Higby had gone to bed, and the parlor-maid’s face as she opened the door was a study. Nobody explained matters to her, and in a complete state of mystification she was sent to request Mrs. Blodgett’s immediate presence in the parlor.
Titus had lifted the little stranger to a chair, and was drawing off his cap and mittens.
“Mrs. Blodgett,” said the Judge, when that good woman appeared, “I wish you to take charge of this child. Put him to sleep at once. If he is nervous, some one must sleep in the room with him. Don’t give him a bath to-night. He is very tired. ”

“ Tutt took a turn up and down his office, then he amputated another stogy, lit the remains, leaned back in his swivel chair, crossed his congress boots upon his desk and folded his hands behind his head.
“Simply because that’s the artistic way to do it,” said he. “Don’t you remember the Blodgett case? Blodgett was ninety-one and dead at the top; he’d had senile dementia for fifteen years. A woman got hold of him—only that time it was a young one—and induced him to make a will in her favor. ”

“ With the throng of excited men and boys came one pale-faced, elderly woman, with her cap awry and her apron over her shoulders. She was Miss Rachel Blodgett, Eliphalet Means's house-keeper.
She took up her position by the Means's gate, and the crowd gathered about her as a nucleus. Other women came running out of neighboring houses, and pressed close to her skirts. Cyrus Robinson's son pushed before her, and, when she began to speak in a strained treble, overpowered it with a coarse volume of bass. ”

“ Whatever else you do in this world, doctor, don’t think that because you can talk a dozen languages, they fit you to be a successful mute.”
“When you are in this mood, Mr. Blodgett, I can be nothing else,” I interpolated, as he paused a moment for breath.
“Alexander Whitely,” he went on, smiling, “probably knows more about petroleum and kerosene than any other man in the world, and he’s made himself rich by his knowledge. But it doesn’t satisfy him to be on the top of his own heap; he wants to get on the top of some other fellow’s. ”

“ The water was dashed on her, her hands were rubbed, and presently the exhausted girl sat up and shut her mouth.
“Will you be kind enough to have some hot soup, or something of the sort, prepared for her,” said Dallas to Mrs. Blodgett, “and make the maids go away. There are too many people in the room.”
Mrs. Blodgett drove everybody out except Titus. However, he soon slipped away, and she and Dallas were alone with the little girl.
They said nothing to her, and Airy, curled up on a sofa, panted and sobbed in a suppressed way, until Jennie appeared with the soup. ”

“ The Judge drew a long breath, and leaned his head slightly forward in the intensity of his interest.
“‘Could I see the bed where Master Titus lay?’ I asked,” continued Mrs. Blodgett. “No, I couldn’t. I was prepared for that. But can you stop a woman when she makes up her mind? No, sir. I sat in the waitin’ room an’ I cried for a solid hour, and then they said I might look in the room for one minute, if I’d promise not to speak above my breath. ”

“ But later, when we looked back on that day and remembered how bitterly we were discouraged, we saw reason to thank God that Roger Hamlin had had the wisdom and the power to crush absolutely the first sign of insubordination.
Staring in a curious way at the cook, who was fairly groveling on the earth, Blodgett spoke up in a strangely listless voice. "I say yes, sir. If we're to die, we're to die anyhow, and there's a bare chance they'll feed us before they butcher us."
"Ay," said Davie. "Me, too!" ”

“ I was as a man carried out of himself. I waited, immovable as the very image of Hed himself whose squat figure presided side by side with Edba, over this heathen revel.
There was a stir among the people, as when the wind blows through the trees of the forest. I heard the royal salute, the clash of arms, and Lah had taken her place on the throne beside me. Then Agno raised his staff, and the band of players in the centre of the court struck from their rude instruments the first measures of a dance. ”

“ She played tennis, gave chafing-dish parties, took a graduate seminar in the drama, went "twosing," and joined half a dozen societies for the practise of the arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture.
In her class there were two or three prettier girls, but none more eager. She was noticeable equally in the classroom grind and at dances, though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett, scores recited more accurately and dozens Bostoned more smoothly. Every cell of her body was alive—thin wrists, quince-blossom skin, ingénue eyes, black hair. ”

“ Come on and let's see what your mesmerist frauds have to say. As a specialist in facts, I'm a drowning man catching at a straw. Come on: mesmerism, or astrology, or Moqui snake-dance, it's all one to me!"
Up the stairs again, this time with Judge Blodgett, warily snuffing the air, and shy of both Bohemia and Benares. Into the presence of Madame le Claire, now gowned appropriately for the morning, and looking—extraordinary, it is true, with her party-colored hair and luminous eyes—but not so jungly as when she greeted the despairing sight of Amidon the night before. ”

“ Judge Blodgett tore open the envelope, and read the telegraphic reports.
"M—m—m——Y—e—es," said he. "It'll take diplomacy, Florian, diplomacy. But, if these reports are to be trusted, and I guess they are, you've got about ten times as much at Bellevale as you have at Hazelhurst. And, as you say, the lady has claims. As an honorable man—an engaged man, who has received the plighted troth of a pure young heart—and a good financier, this Bellevale life demands resumption at your hands. Prepare, fellow citizen, to meet the difficulties of the situation." ”

“ Blodgett, decidedly, “I wish you would speak to this little girl, for she don’t mind me. I’m tellin’ her all the time that, though you don’t like wastefulness, yet meanness is hateful to you, and she do the strangest things. She picks up coal and little bits of sticks for the fire, an’ she goes round an’ smells the soap—”
“Smells the soap?” repeated the Judge, in bewilderment.
“Yes, sir; I caught her the other day. She were in your room. You know, sir, you has in your bathroom sandalwood soap. Master Titus, he have pure Castile; the strange boy he have common toilet ”

“ A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth.
It is Carol Milford, fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College. ”

“ The Gypsies had been after bigger game than a few dollars' worth of auto furnishings.
"Come now!" exclaimed Sam Blodgett. "I can't wait here all night. I only agreed to drag the car ter town."
"But where could those girls have gone? My sister and Ruth Fielding?"
"Ye ain't payin' me ter be no detectif," drawled the man. "Come! Shell I hitch on?"
"Oh, yes! I don't know what else to do," groaned the boy. "I've got to get the car fixed first of all. Then I will find help and follow the girls."
The farmer was as unsympathetic as a man possibly could be. He started the car and let Tom ride in it. ”

“ All the time Aleck was cleaning the Coal-Oil Lamps or watching the New Orleans Syrup trickle into the Jug, he was figuring how much of the Stipend he could segregate and isolate and set aside for the venerable Mr. Fishberry, the Taker-In up at the Bank with the Chinchilla on the Larynx.
For ten long years the White Slave tested Eggs and scooped the C Sugar.
When Aleck became of Age, Mr. Blodgett was compelling him to take $30 the first of every month. ”

“ When at length she did open her lips, I found too that I had forgotten the power of 152that musical voice; at least its tones sent a sudden thrill through all my being, and I listened, spellbound, against my will.
“Thou art a man,” said Lah; “therefore I say not to thee, let fear slip from thee as a garment. Fear lodges not in this breast of thine, else thou hadst not thrust thyself, by what means I know not, thus into the jaws of death; aye! into the secret storeroom of the Kings of the House, where lies the very treasure of the gods themselves.” ”

“ We found the Blodgett Hotel at Marshfield—with a really, truly carpet in the dining-room—a good hotel, clean and comfortable. The next day we had two hundred miles to go to St. Paul, and were promised42 good roads. Colby, Eau Claire, and Chippewa Falls are all attractive towns. Wisconsin boasts of six thousand lakes. It certainly is a paradise for the huntsman and the angler—“The land with charm for every mile.” The method of numbering the state highways is the best we have found. You simply can’t lose your way. We, unfortunately, had several long detours and did not reach St. ”

“ Him, they think long since dead. Let his name be forgotten lest it be cursed before the Council.”
“But the maid, the maid!” cried Lestrade.
The eyes of the stranger narrowed. A curious light blazed in their depths. With a superhuman effort, the dying man raised himself from the ground.
“I am a priest of the Council,” he cried, in a strange, chanting kind of voice. “I have been traitor. I have been slave. To Edba and to Hed have I turned my back. But my gods remember, my gods are strong, my gods punish. Think not to wrest from the Snake, his bride.” ”

“ And she is all in all to me. The wrath of Edba and Hed strike me alone. I am their rightful victim; let them spare my child.”
“Your child!” I cried in amazement, but she turned upon me with her old savagery.
“And you, her lover, waste the time in idle words. You stand here prating, while the mob, maddened by the priests, fire the Palace and tear in pieces Lah, their Queen.”
I turned, stricken dumb by the horror of her words, and it was Lestrade who put the question that trembled on my lips.
“The hag is distraught or worse,” he said, with contempt. “Think not to cheat us by so clumsy a trick. ”

“ And without former knowledge who could have guessed the hidden secrets of Lah’s palace, or the mysteries that gathered thick about the dwelling-place of Edba and of Hed.
I heard Lestrade whistling softly there in the darkness not ten paces away. The sound heartened me wonderfully. We were still together, and what might befall lost half its terror.
All at once our bearers halted. I was gently laid upon a couch. My bonds were loosened, and as I sprang to my feet a light flashed from above, and I found myself standing beside Lestrade. The throng had melted away as if by magic. ”

“ Astolba was standing, helpless as a bird in the snare of the fowler, her feet resting on the centre crimson stone.
A hush fell on the multitude. I saw a wreath of roses flung upon the victim’s head, while at the same time a slender 177cord, sent swift through the air by an unseen hand, coiled itself about the body of the shuddering girl.
“The great god Hed has chosen!” shrieked the people. “To the pit with the bride! To the pit!”
Then I knew my time had come. No human power could have held me back. I tore the clinging veil and mantle from my limbs. ”

“ Nay, more, mark you, followers of Edba, and you, too, worshippers of Hed, already the people scorn us for our weakness.
“Already the gold runs scantily in our coffers; already have fallen away the gifts to the temple. Not twelve hours since, a blemished goat was offered at the altar; already the voice of the multitude is raised against us. Aye, even as I approached this sacred meeting-place, a drunken soldier of the Queen stumbled rudely against me, and when 98I cursed him for his awkwardness, he laughed,—yes, my brethren,—laughed in my very face. ”