“Do you see that old fellow in the corner? How he grasps with his hands and mutters, and now he is trying to call ‘murder!’ He has spent all his life hoarding up riches, and now, sleeping or waking, he lives in constant terror of losing his gold that he will neither spend for himself or others.”
“But here,” and the speaker pointed to a corner near at hand, where rolled up into a round yellow ball, was the figure of Johnny Staples, sound asleep in the velvety depths of an easy chair, his good-natured, honest little face, calm and peaceful, with not a cloud of suffering, remorse or fear to mar its innocent beauty.
“But here,” he repeated, “is one who will find in our friend’s party the refreshment and rest that only health and innocence can reasonably expect.”
Just then the company showed signs of a general breaking up, and the assembled guests gave such a loud, unanimous snore that Ef May started up, terrified half out of her senses; and pulling vigorously at her sleeping sister’s sleeve, she cried out with a burst of angry tears:
“It’s a nasty, mean old party, any how! They snore, an’ talk in their sleep, an’ make up faces, an’—I won’t go again, so, there!”
But she did for all that.
