come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out,
and I declare I — I — why I could skin you alive! You
must be starving, poor things! — set down, set down,
everybody; don’t lose no more time.”
It was good to be there again behind all that noble
corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could
ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he peeled off
one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many
layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was haul-
ing in the slack of it I was trying to study up what to
say about what kept us so long. When our plates was
all loadened and we’d got a-going, she asked me, and
I says:
“Well, you see, — er — Mizzes –”
“Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you?
Have I ever been stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since
the day you stood in this room and I took you for Tom
Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though
you told me four thousand lies and I believed every
one of them like a simpleton? Call me Aunt Sally —
like you always done.”
So I done it. And I says:
“Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along
afoot and take a smell of the woods, and we run across
Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to go with
them blackberrying to-night, and said they could bor-
row Jubiter Dunlap’s dog, because he had told them
just that minute –”
“Where did they see him?” says the old man; and
when I looked up to see how HE come to take an intrust
in a little thing like that, his eyes was just burning into
me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of
throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and
says:
“It was when he was spading up some ground along
with you, towards sundown or along there.”
He only said, “Um,” in a kind of a disappointed
way, and didn’t take no more intrust. So I went on.
I says:
“Well, then, as I was a-saying –”
“That’ll do, you needn’t go no furder.” It was
Aunt Sally. She was boring right into me with her
eyes, and very indignant. “Huck Finn,” she says,
“how’d them men come to talk about going a-black-
berrying in September — in THIS region?”
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn’t say a word.
She waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says:
“And how’d they come to strike that idiot idea of
going a-blackberrying in the night?”
“Well, m’m, they — er — they told us they had a
lantern, and –”
“Oh, SHET up — do! Looky here; what was they
going to do with a dog? — hunt blackberries with it?”
“I think, m’m, they –”
“Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fix-
ing YOUR mouth to contribit to this mess of rubbage?
Speak out — and I warn you before you begin, that
I don’t believe a word of it. You and Huck’s been up
to something you no business to — I know it perfectly
well; I know you, BOTH of you. Now you explain that
dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, and the
rest of that rot — and mind you talk as straight as a
string — do you hear?”
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very
dignified:
“It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just
for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could
make.”
“What mistake has he made?”
“Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when
of course he meant strawberries.”
“Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little
more, I’ll –”
“Aunt Sally, without knowing it — and of course
without intending it — you are in the wrong. If you’d
‘a’ studied natural history the way you ought, you
would know that all over the world except just here in
Arkansaw they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dog —
and a lantern –“