Kabanata Kabanata 37 · 第37章

That was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile

in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces

of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched

around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well

as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it

full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of

shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble

his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them

in Aunt Sally’s apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t’other

we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat, which was on the bureau,

because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the

runaway nigger’s house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and

Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas’s coat-pocket, and Aunt

Sally wasn’t come yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn’t hardly

wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with

one hand and cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble with

the other, and says:

“I’ve hunted high and I’ve hunted low, and it does beat all what _has_

become of your other shirt.”

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard

piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the

road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the

children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a

cry out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue

around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things

for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold

out for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all

right again—it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of

cold. Uncle Silas he says:

“It’s most uncommon curious, I can’t understand it. I know perfectly

well I took it _off_, because—”

“Because you hain’t got but one _on_. Just _listen_ at the man! _I_

know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your

wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo’s-line

yesterday—I see it there myself. But it’s gone, that’s the long and the

short of it, and you’ll just have to change to a red flann’l one till I

can get time to make a new one. And it’ll be the third I’ve made in

two years. It just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and

whatever you do manage to _do_ with ’m all is more’n _I_ can make out.

A body ’d think you _would_ learn to take some sort of care of ’em at

your time of life.”

“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn’t to be

altogether my fault, because, you know, I don’t see them nor have

nothing to do with them except when they’re on me; and I don’t believe

I’ve ever lost one of them _off_ of me.”

“Well, it ain’t _your_ fault if you haven’t, Silas; you’d a done it if

you could, I reckon. And the shirt ain’t all that’s gone, nuther.

Ther’s a spoon gone; and _that_ ain’t all. There was ten, and now

ther’s only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never

took the spoon, _that’s_ certain.”

“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”

“Ther’s six _candles_ gone—that’s what. The rats could a got the

candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don’t walk off with the

whole place, the way you’re always going to stop their holes and don’t

do it; and if they warn’t fools they’d sleep in your hair,

Silas—_you’d_ never find it out; but you can’t lay the _spoon_ on the

rats, and that I _know_.”

“Well, Sally, I’m in fault, and I acknowledge it; I’ve been remiss; but

I won’t let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry; next year’ll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta

_Phelps!_”

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the

sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman steps

on to the passage, and says:

“Missus, dey’s a sheet gone.”

“A _sheet_ gone! Well, for the land’s sake!”

“I’ll stop up them holes _to-day_,” says Uncle Silas, looking

sorrowful.

“Oh, _do_ shet up!—s’pose the rats took the _sheet? Where’s_ it gone,

Lize?”

“Clah to goodness I hain’t no notion, Miss’ Sally. She wuz on de

clo’sline yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain’ dah no mo’ now.”

“I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end. I _never_ see the beat of it

in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can—”

“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey’s a brass cannelstick

miss’n.”

“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I’ll take a skillet to ye!”

Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I

would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She

kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and

everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking

kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped,

with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in

Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

“It’s _just_ as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time;

and like as not you’ve got the other things there, too. How’d it get

there?”

“I reely don’t know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know

I would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before

breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put

my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain’t in; but

I’ll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I’ll know I

didn’t put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and

took up the spoon, and—”

“Oh, for the land’s sake! Give a body a rest! Go ’long now, the whole

kit and biling of ye; and don’t come nigh me again till I’ve got back

my peace of mind.”

_I’d_ a heard her if she’d a said it to herself, let alone speaking it

out; and I’d a got up and obeyed her if I’d a been dead. As we was

passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and

the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up

and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out.

Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

“Well, it ain’t no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain’t

reliable.” Then he says: “But he done us a good turn with the spoon,

anyway, without knowing it, and so we’ll go and do him one without

_him_ knowing it—stop up his rat-holes.”

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole

hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard

steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes

the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in

t’other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a

mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he’d been

to them all. Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off

of his candle and thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards

the stairs, saying:

“Well, for the life of me I can’t remember when I done it. I could show

her now that I warn’t to blame on account of the rats. But never

mind—let it go. I reckon it wouldn’t do no good.”

And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a

mighty nice old man. And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said

we’d got to have it; so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he

told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the

spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to

counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of

them up my sleeve, and Tom says:

“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons _yet_.”

She says:

“Go ’long to your play, and don’t bother me. I know better, I counted

’m myself.”

“Well, I’ve counted them twice, Aunty, and _I_ can’t make but nine.”

She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count—anybody

would.

“I declare to gracious ther’ _ain’t_ but nine!” she says. “Why, what in

the world—plague _take_ the things, I’ll count ’m again.”

So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she

says:

“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther’s _ten_ now!” and she looked huffy

and bothered both. But Tom says:

“Why, Aunty, _I_ don’t think there’s ten.”

“You numskull, didn’t you see me _count_ ’m?”

“I know, but—”

“Well, I’ll count ’m _again_.”

So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time.

Well, she _was_ in a tearing way—just a-trembling all over, she was so

mad. But she counted and counted till she got that addled she’d start

to count in the _basket_ for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times

they come out right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she

grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the

cat galley-west; and she said cle’r out and let her have some peace,

and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she’d

skin us. So we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket

whilst she was a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all

right, along with her shingle nail, before noon. We was very well

satisfied with this business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the

trouble it took, because he said _now_ she couldn’t ever count them

spoons twice alike again to save her life; and wouldn’t believe she’d

counted them right if she _did;_ and said that after she’d about

counted her head off for the next three days he judged she’d give it up

and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more.

So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of

her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a

couple of days till she didn’t know how many sheets she had any more,

and she didn’t _care_, and warn’t a-going to bullyrag the rest of her

soul out about it, and wouldn’t count them again not to save her life;

she druther die first.

So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon

and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up

counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn’t no consequence, it would

blow over by-and-by.

But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. We

fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it

done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and

we had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through,

and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with

the smoke; because, you see, we didn’t want nothing but a crust, and we

couldn’t prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course

we thought of the right way at last—which was to cook the ladder, too,

in the pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up

the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together, and long

before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person

with. We let on it took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn’t go

into the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope

enough for forty pies if we’d a wanted them, and plenty left over for

soup, or sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole

dinner.

But we didn’t need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, and

so we throwed the rest away. We didn’t cook none of the pies in the

wash-pan—afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble

brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged

to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from

England with William the Conqueror in the _Mayflower_ or one of them

early ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and

things that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because

they warn’t, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we

snaked her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the

first pies, because we didn’t know how, but she come up smiling on the

last one. We took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals,

and loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down

the lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the

long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned

out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it

would want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that

rope ladder wouldn’t cramp him down to business I don’t know nothing

what I’m talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him

till next time, too.

Nat didn’t look when we put the witch pie in Jim’s pan; and we put the

three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim

got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted

into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and

scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the

window-hole.