But she busted in on him there and just piled into
him and snowed him under. She was so mad she
couldn’t get the words out fast enough, and she gushed
them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what
Tom Sawyer was after. He allowed to work her up
and get her started and then leave her alone and let her
burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated
with that subject that she wouldn’t say another word
about it, nor let anybody else. Well, it happened just
so. When she was tuckered out and had to hold up,
he says, quite ca’m:
“And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally –”
“Shet up!” she says, “I don’t want to hear
another word out of you.”
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn’t have no
more trouble about that delay. Tom done it elegant.
CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT’S VIGIL
BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed
some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to
asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom’s aunt Polly,
and then Aunt Sally’s clouds cleared off and she got in
a good humor and joined in on the questions and was
her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper
went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he
didn’t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded
and restless, and done a considerable amount of sigh-
ing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so
sad and troubled and worried.
By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and
knocked on the door and put his head in with his old
straw hat in his hand bowing and scraping, and said his
Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his
brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him,
and would Marse Silas please tell him where he was?
I never see Uncle Silas speak up so sharp and fractious
before. He says:
“Am I his brother’s keeper?” And then he kind
of wilted together, and looked like he wished he hadn’t
spoken so, and then he says, very gentle: “But you
needn’t say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable,
and I ain’t very well these days, and not hardly respon-
sible. Tell him he ain’t here.”
And when the nigger was gone he got up and
walked the floor, backwards and forwards, mumbling
and muttering to himself and plowing his hands through
his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she
whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him,
it embarrassed him. She said he was always thinking
and thinking, since these troubles come on, and she
allowed he didn’t more’n about half know what he was
about when the thinking spells was on him; and she
said he walked in his sleep considerable more now than
he used to, and sometimes wandered around over the
house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched
him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him.
She said she reckoned it didn’t do him no harm, and
may be it done him good. She said Benny was the
only one that was much help to him these days. Said
Benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe
him and when to leave him alone.
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and
muttering, till by and by he begun to look pretty tired;
then Benny she went and snuggled up to his side and
put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and
walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and
reached down and kissed her; and so, little by little
the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded him
off to his room. They had very petting ways together,
and it was uncommon pretty to see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready
for bed; so by and by it got dull and tedious, and me
and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and fetched up
in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good