Robert Hardys Seven Days | Page 6

old one-horse bridges! What makes me angry is
the way Caesar has of telling a thing. Why can't he drive right straight
ahead instead of beating about the bush so? If I couldn't get up a better
language than those old duffers used to write their books in, I'd lie
down and die. I can't find the old verb to that sentence anyway. Maybe

it's around on the other page somewhere, or maybe Caesar left it out
just on purpose to plague us boys."
And Will shied the book over to Alice, who good-naturedly began to
read, while that much suffering youth sat down by Bess and began to
tease her and Clara.
"What are you and Clara doing at this time of day? Time you
youngsters were going up stairs. Play us a little tune, Bessie, will you?
What you been crying for, Clara Vere de Vere?"
"I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, Will, studying on
Sundays," said Bess reprovingly and with dignity.
"No worse than sparking Sunday nights," retorted the incorrigible Will.
"I haven't been," replied Bess, indignantly. "I've been with Clara."
"She doesn't need any help, does she?" inquired Will, innocently. And
going over where Clara lay with her face hid in the pillow of a large
couch, Will tried to pull the pillow out from under her head.
"Let me alone, Will. I don't feel well," said a muffled voice from the
pillow.
"Pshaw! you're fooling."
"No, I'm not. Let me alone."
"Come here, or I won't read your sentence for you," called Alice. And
Will reluctantly withdrew, for he knew from experience that Alice
would keep her word.
"All right. Now go ahead; not too fast. Here! Wait a minute! Let me
write her down. I don't intend to miss to-morrow if I can help it. And
old Romulus will call me up on this very passage, I know. Be just like
him, though, to strike me on the review."
At that minute the door opened and in came George, the elder boy, and

the oldest of the group of children. He hung up hat and coat, and
strolled into the room.
"Where's mother?"
"She's in the other room," answered Bess. "Father's been asleep, and
mother was afraid he was going to have a fever."
"That's one of your stories," said George, who seemed in a
good-natured mood. He sat down and drew his little sister towards him
and whispered to her:
"Say, Bess, I want some money again."
"Awfully?" whispered Bess.
"Yes, for a special reason. Do you think you could let me have a little?"
"Why, of course! you can have all my month's allowance. But why
don't you ask father?"
"No; I've asked him too much lately. He refused point blank last time. I
didn't like the way he spoke."
"Well, you can have all mine," said Bess, whispering.
George and she were great friends, and there was not a thing that
Bessie would not have done for her big brother, who was her hero.
What he wanted with so much money she never asked.
They were still whispering together, and Clara had just risen to go
upstairs, and Alice and Will had finished the translation, and Will was
just on the point of seeing how near he could come to throwing the
Commentaries of Caesar into an ornamental Japanese jar across the
room, when Mrs. Hardy parted the curtains at the arch and beckoned
her children to come into the next room. Her face was exceedingly pale,
and she was trembling as if with some great terror.
The children all cried out in surprise and hurried into the next room.

But before relating what happened there, we will follow Mr. Hardy into
the experience he had, just after falling asleep upon the lounge by the
open fire.
It seemed to him that he stepped at once from the room where he lay
into a place such as he had never seen before, where the one great idea
that filled his entire thought was that of the Present Moment. Spread
out before him as if reproduced by a phonograph and a magic lantern
combined was the moving panorama of the entire world. He thought he
saw into every home, every public place of business, every saloon and
place of amusement, every shop and every farm, every place of
industry, pleasure, and vice upon the face of the globe. And he thought
he could hear the world's conversation, catch its sobs of suffering--nay,
even catch the meaning of unspoken thoughts of the heart. With that
absurd rapidity peculiar to certain dreams, he fancied that over every
city on the globe was placed a glass cover through which he could look,
and through which the sounds of the city's industry came to him. But