Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/293

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THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH
271

a new and richer coloring tinted existence. For purchased she was, though just how, it would not do to question too closely. [1] It is only known that back yards and garrets and cellars were ransacked for bottles and rags and metals and bones, scoured and ransacked as they had never been scoured and ransacked before, that early vegetables were mysteriously peddled about the foreign parts of the town, that copper bottoms were deftly taken from boilers which had, indeed, merely been laid aside for repairs, and that even flatirons had been known to disappear as though by magic. Sunday pennies that should have gone to the clothing of the heathen were grimly held back. Bills were peddled, and errands were run with an alacrity never before discovered in the small

  1. How Lonely raised a goodly portion of this purchase money is, perhaps, worthy of passing note. He took a contract from Judge Eby to remove from a driveway several cords of field-stone—a task of many days for one boy alone. Lonely, however, having organized a fire brigade among the gang, built a good-sized bonfire in the nearby ditch,—and the zealous brigade, in feverish and determined attempts to smother this conflagration, seized on the nearest stones, and performed a week's work without even knowing it!