Читать книгу Lantern Marsh онлайн

13 страница из 92

“Hold on, Snowball!” William said, across the table, with a glare of mock earnestness, as he reached to sink his knife into the butter. “You know you’re lyin’. All the pretty gals up to Beulah is crazy about you.”

Snowball laughed a silent, internal kind of laugh that caused his shoulders to rise and fall in rapid jerks to its rhythm, and ended in its first audible accompaniment—a sound exactly like the suction of a sink-basin drawing in the last eddying portion of water.

“The gals is g-gone on you, Bill, not me!” he retorted, with much keen winking of his lids, and entered immediately on a second bout of noiseless, private laughter which terminated, after the others had forgotten his remarks, in the same astonishing sound.

“D’juh see the bay mare to-day, Bill?” Bard presently inquired, across the level of a wide slice of bread, from which he had bitten out a semi-circular portion. William looked up knowingly from his well-loaded fork and nodded his head sagely with a slight lifting of his brows, as though an intimate understanding existed.