Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was
to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something.
No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll fix it with all of
them. I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say
you’ve went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change,
or to see a friend, and you’ll be back to-night or early in the
morning.”
“Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won’t have my love given to
them.”
“Well, then, it sha’n’t be.” It was well enough to tell _her_ so—no
harm in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s
the little things that smooths people’s roads the most, down here
below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost
nothing. Then I says: “There’s one more thing—that bag of money.”
“Well, they’ve got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think
_how_ they got it.”
“No, you’re out, there. They hain’t got it.”
“Why, who’s got it?”
“I wish I knowed, but I don’t. I _had_ it, because I stole it from
them; and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I’m
afraid it ain’t there no more. I’m awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I’m
just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did honest. I
come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I
come to, and run—and it warn’t a good place.”
“Oh, stop blaming yourself—it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow
it—you couldn’t help it; it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide it?”
I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I
couldn’t seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that
corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So
for a minute I didn’t say nothing; then I says:
“I’d ruther not _tell_ you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don’t
mind letting me off; but I’ll write it for you on a piece of paper, and
you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop’s, if you want to. Do you
reckon that’ll do?”
“Oh, yes.”
So I wrote: “I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was
crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was
mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”
It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by
herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own
roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it
to her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the
hand, hard, and says:
“_Good_-bye. I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; and if
I don’t ever see you again, I sha’n’t ever forget you and I’ll think of
you a many and a many a time, and I’ll _pray_ for you, too!”—and she
was gone.
Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more
nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same—she was just that
kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there
warn’t no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but
in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my
opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it
ain’t no flattery. And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she
lays over them all. I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see
her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon
I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her
saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d a thought it would do any
good for me to pray for _her_, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.
Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see
her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:
“What’s the name of them people over on t’other side of the river that
you all goes to see sometimes?”
They says:
“There’s several; but it’s the Proctors, mainly.”
“That’s the name,” I says; “I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she
told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of
them’s sick.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it’s—”
“Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t _Hanner?_”
“I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.”
“My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?”
“It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary
Jane said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”
“Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her?”
I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:
“Mumps.”
“Mumps your granny! They don’t set up with people that’s got the
mumps.”
“They don’t, don’t they? You better bet they do with _these_ mumps.
These mumps is different. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”
“How’s it a new kind?”
“Because it’s mixed up with other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and
yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don’t know what all.”
“My land! And they call it the _mumps?_”
“That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”
“Well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?”
“Why, because it _is_ the mumps. That’s what it starts with.”
“Well, ther’ ain’t no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take
pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains
out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull
up and say, ‘Why, he stumped his _toe_.’ Would ther’ be any sense in
that? _No_. And ther’ ain’t no sense in _this_, nuther. Is it
ketching?”
“Is it _ketching?_ Why, how you talk. Is a _harrow_ catching—in the
dark? If you don’t hitch on to one tooth, you’re bound to on another,
ain’t you? And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the
whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a
harrow, as you may say—and it ain’t no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you
come to get it hitched on good.”
“Well, it’s awful, _I_ think,” says the hare-lip. “I’ll go to Uncle
Harvey and—”
“Oh, yes,” I says, “I _would_. Of _course_ I would. I wouldn’t lose no
time.”
“Well, why wouldn’t you?”
“Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain’t your uncles
obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you
reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that
journey by yourselves? _You_ know they’ll wait for you. So fur, so
good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, ain’t he? Very well, then; is a
_preacher_ going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a
_ship clerk?_—so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now
_you_ know he ain’t. What _will_ he do, then? Why, he’ll say, ‘It’s a
great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way
they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum
mumps, and so it’s my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three
months it takes to show on her if she’s got it.’ But never mind, if you
think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”
“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good
times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane’s
got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins.”
“Well, anyway, maybe you’d better tell some of the neighbors.”
“Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can’t you
_see_ that _they’d_ go and tell? Ther’ ain’t no way but just to not
tell anybody at _all_.”
“Well, maybe you’re right—yes, I judge you _are_ right.”
“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out a while,
anyway, so he won’t be uneasy about her?”
“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, ‘Tell them to
give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I’ve run over
the river to see Mr.’—Mr.—what _is_ the name of that rich family your
uncle Peter used to think so much of?—I mean the one that—”
“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain’t it?”
“Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can’t ever seem to
remember them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run
over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy
this house, because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had
it than anybody else; and she’s going to stick to them till they say
they’ll come, and then, if she ain’t too tired, she’s coming home; and
if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don’t say
nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps—which’ll be
perfectly true, because she _is_ going there to speak about their
buying the house; I know it, because she told me so herself.”
“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and
give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.
Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn’t say nothing because
they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther
Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of
Doctor Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat—I
reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t a done it no neater himself. Of course he
would a throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not
being brung up to it.
Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end
of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old
man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of
the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a
little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around
goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself
generly.
But by-and-by the thing dragged through, and everything was
sold—everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So
they’d got to work _that_ off—I never see such a girafft as the king
was for wanting to swallow _everything_. Well, whilst they was at it a
steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping
and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:
“_Here’s_ your opposition line! here’s your two sets o’ heirs to old
Peter Wilks—and you pays your money and you takes your choice!”
CHAPTER XXIX.
They was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a
nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls,
how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn’t see no
joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some
to see any. I reckoned they’d turn pale. But no, nary a pale did _they_
turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just
went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that’s
googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed
down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in
his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the
world. Oh, he done it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered
around the king, to let him see they was on his side. That old
gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon
he begun to speak, and I see straight off he pronounced _like_ an
Englishman—not the king’s way, though the king’s _was_ pretty good for
an imitation. I can’t give the old gent’s words, nor I can’t imitate
him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this:
“This is a surprise to me which I wasn’t looking for; and I’ll
acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain’t very well fixed to meet it and
answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he’s broke his
arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the
night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks’ brother Harvey, and this is his
brother William, which can’t hear nor speak—and can’t even make signs