The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a
craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on
it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his
fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at
it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. But
he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a
fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close
to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the
beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony
and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so
did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew
down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the
home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was
but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of
light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang
into its master’s lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of
distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.
By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with
suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill.
The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all
possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest
sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of
unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson
had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole
congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.
Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was
some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety
in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog
should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright in
him to carry it off.
CHAPTER VI
Monday morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found
him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school. He
generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday,
it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious.
Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was
sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague possibility.
He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he investigated
again. This time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he
began to encourage them with considerable hope. But they soon grew
feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected further. Suddenly
he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth was loose. This
was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a “starter,” as he
called it, when it occurred to him that if he came into court with that
argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that would hurt. So he thought
he would hold the tooth in reserve for the present, and seek further.
Nothing offered for some little time, and then he remembered hearing
the doctor tell about a certain thing that laid up a patient for two or
three weeks and threatened to make him lose a finger. So the boy eagerly
drew his sore toe from under the sheet and held it up for inspection.
But now he did not know the necessary symptoms. However, it seemed
well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable
spirit.
But Sid slept on unconscious.
Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe.
No result from Sid.
Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and then
swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans.
Sid snored on.
Tom was aggravated. He said, “Sid, Sid!” and shook him. This course
worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then
brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at Tom.
Tom went on groaning. Sid said:
“Tom! Say, Tom!” [No response.] “Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter,
Tom?” And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously.
Tom moaned out:
“Oh, don’t, Sid. Don’t joggle me.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Tom? I must call auntie.”
“No—never mind. It’ll be over by and by, maybe. Don’t call anybody.”
“But I must! _Don’t_ groan so, Tom, it’s awful. How long you been this
way?”
“Hours. Ouch! Oh, don’t stir so, Sid, you’ll kill me.”
“Tom, why didn’t you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, _don’t!_ It makes my flesh
crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?”
“I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you’ve ever done to
me. When I’m gone—”
“Oh, Tom, you ain’t dying, are you? Don’t, Tom—oh, don’t. Maybe—”
“I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell ’em so, Sid. And Sid, you give
my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that’s come to
town, and tell her—”
But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in reality,
now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had
gathered quite a genuine tone.
Sid flew downstairs and said:
“Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom’s dying!”
“Dying!”
“Yes’m. Don’t wait—come quick!”
“Rubbage! I don’t believe it!”
But she fled upstairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels.
And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached the
bedside she gasped out:
“You, Tom! Tom, what’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, auntie, I’m—”
“What’s the matter with you—what is the matter with you, child?”
“Oh, auntie, my sore toe’s mortified!”
The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a
little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:
“Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and
climb out of this.”
The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a
little foolish, and he said:
“Aunt Polly, it _seemed_ mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my
tooth at all.”
“Your tooth, indeed! What’s the matter with your tooth?”
“One of them’s loose, and it aches perfectly awful.”
“There, there, now, don’t begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well—your tooth _is_ loose, but you’re not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen.”
Tom said:
“Oh, please, auntie, don’t pull it out. It don’t hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don’t, auntie. I don’t want to stay
home from school.”
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? So all this row was because you thought you’d
get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so,
and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your
outrageousness.” By this time the dental instruments were ready. The old
lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom’s tooth with a loop
and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and
suddenly thrust it almost into the boy’s face. The tooth hung dangling
by the bedpost, now.
But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after
breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his
upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable
way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition;
and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and
homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent,
and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain
which he did not feel that it wasn’t anything to spit like Tom Sawyer;
but another boy said, “Sour grapes!” and he wandered away a dismantled
hero.
Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad—and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat
was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,
when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons
far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of
the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged
in the dirt when not rolled up.
Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor
put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed,
hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.
Tom hailed the romantic outcast:
“Hello, Huckleberry!”
“Hello yourself, and see how you like it.”
“What’s that you got?”
“Dead cat.”
“Lemme see him, Huck. My, he’s pretty stiff. Where’d you get him?”
“Bought him off’n a boy.”
“What did you give?”
“I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.”
“Where’d you get the blue ticket?”
“Bought it off’n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.”
“Say—what is dead cats good for, Huck?”
“Good for? Cure warts with.”
“No! Is that so? I know something that’s better.”
“I bet you don’t. What is it?”
“Why, spunk-water.”
“Spunk-water! I wouldn’t give a dern for spunk-water.”
“You wouldn’t, wouldn’t you? D’you ever try it?”
“No, I hain’t. But Bob Tanner did.”
“Who told you so!”
“Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny
told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the
nigger told me. There now!”
“Well, what of it? They’ll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I
don’t know _him_. But I never see a nigger that _wouldn’t_ lie. Shucks!
Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.”
“Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water
was.”
“In the daytime?”
“Certainly.”
“With his face to the stump?”
“Yes. Least I reckon so.”
“Did he say anything?”
“I don’t reckon he did. I don’t know.”
“Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool
way as that! Why, that ain’t a-going to do any good. You got to go all
by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there’s a
spunk-water stump, and just as it’s midnight you back up against the
stump and jam your hand in and say:
‘Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,’
and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm’s busted.”
“Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain’t the way Bob Tanner
done.”
“No, sir, you can bet he didn’t, becuz he’s the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn’t have a wart on him if he’d knowed how to work
spunk-water. I’ve took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I’ve always got considerable many