We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, even to Uncle Silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and rag-gedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in time of need. She jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she says:
"Where HAVE you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you 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 --"
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.
