TOM ROSE SQUARE UP IN BED.
"I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'll go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will."
"Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?"
"Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I wanted the adventure of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to—goodness alive, Aunt Polly!"
If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half-full of pie, I wish I may never!
Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles—kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she says:
"Yes, you better turn y'r head away—I would if I was you, Tom."
"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "is he changed so? Why, that ain't Tom it's Sid; Tom's—Tom's—why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago."
"You mean where's Huck Finn—that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years, not to know him when I see him. That would be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, Huck Finn."
So I done it. But not feeling brash.
Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest looking persons I ever see; except
