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[Editorial] barelegged -> bare-legged
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@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@
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<p>The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe’s face.</p>
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<p>“Beautiful,” he said, with enthusiasm. “Valley as level as this floor, with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just enough brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six feet, and then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it, with windmills and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess—too far from market—but comfortable. Never saw so many kids in my life.”</p>
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<p>“They raise flocks?” inquired the Commissioner.</p>
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<p>“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged, and barelegged, and towheaded.”</p>
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<p>“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged, and bare-legged, and towheaded.”</p>
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<p>“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view had opened to him; “they raise children!”</p>
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<p>“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you blame ’em?”</p>
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<p>“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are towheaded. It would not be unreasonable, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”</p>
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<p>Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But it can’t be helped. It’s the subconscious smell of the footlights’ smoke that’s in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook’s soul sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese.</p>
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<p>Merriam and <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy.</p>
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<p>They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other’s world. <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. “Good night, my world,” would say <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Conant every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that nothing could sever.</p>
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<p>One day a steamer hove in the offing. Barelegged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o’clock tea.</p>
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<p>One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o’clock tea.</p>
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<p>When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.</p>
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<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">H.</abbr> Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away.</p>
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<p>When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: “Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn’t expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New York—Merriam, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Quinby.”</p>
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