Aunt Jane's Nieces
"
With a sudden bound he dashed her aside, so rudely that she almost
fell, and an instant later he had left the summer house and disappear
among the hedges.
Louise laughed at her own discomfiture and gave up the attempt to make
the boy's acquaintance.
"He's a regular savage," she told Beth, afterward, "and a little
crazy, too, I suspect."
"Never mind," said Beth, philosophically. "He's only a boy, and
doesn't amount to anything, anyway. After Aunt Jane dies he will
probably go somewhere else to live. Don't let us bother about him."
Kenneth's one persistent friend was Uncle John. He came every day
to the boy's room to play chess with him, and after that one day's
punishment, which, singularly enough, Kenneth in no way resented, they
got along very nicely together. Uncle John was a shrewd player of the
difficult game, but the boy was quick as a flash to see an advantage
and use it against his opponent; so neither was ever sure of winning
and the interest in the game was constantly maintained. At evening
also the little man often came to sit on the stair outside the boy's
room and smoke his pipe, and frequently they would sit beneath the
stars, absorbed in thought and without exchanging a single word.
Unfortunately, Louise and Beth soon discovered the boy's secluded
retreat, and loved to torment him by entering his own bit of garden
and even ascending the stairs to his little room. He could easily
escape them by running through the numerous upper halls of the
mansion; but here he was liable to meet others, and his especial dread
was encountering old Miss Merrick. So he conceived a plan for avoiding
the girls in another way.
In the hallway of the left wing, near his door, was a small ladder
leading to the second story roof, and a dozen feet from the edge of
the roof stood an old oak tree, on the further side of a tall hedge.
Kenneth managed to carry a plank to the roof, where, after several
attempts, he succeeded in dropping one end into a crotch of the oak,
thus connecting the edge of the roof with the tree by means of the
narrow plank.
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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