LITMIR.BIZ

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      CHAPTER VI

      Table of Contents

      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

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