9
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"
13
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked
14
over them about the room; then she put them up and
15
looked out under them. She seldom or never looked
16
THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were
17
her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built
18
for "style," not service -- she could have seen through
19
a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed
20
for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still
21
loud enough for the furniture to hear:
23
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll --"
25
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending
26
down and punching under the bed with the broom,
27
and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches
28
with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
30
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"
32
She went to the open door and stood in it and looked
33
out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that
34
constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up
35
her voice at an angle calculated for distance and
40
There was a slight noise behind her and she turned
41
just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his
42
roundabout and arrest his flight.
44
"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What
45
you been doing in there?"
49
"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at
50
your mouth. What IS that truck?"
54
"Well, I know. It's jam -- that's what it is. Forty
55
times I've said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin
56
you. Hand me that switch."
58
The switch hovered in the air -- the peril was des-
61
"My! Look behind you, aunt!"
63
The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts
64
out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled
65
up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it.
67
His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then
68
broke into a gentle laugh.
70
"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't
71
he played me tricks enough like that for me to be look-
72
ing out for him by this time? But old fools is the big-
73
gest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
74
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays
75
them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's
76
coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can
77
torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows
78
if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make
79
me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick.
80
I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's
81
truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the
82
child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and
83
suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the Old
84
Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy,
85
poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, some-
86
how. Every time I let him off, my conscience does
87
hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most
88
breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of
89
few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and
90
I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * and
91
[* Southwestern for "afternoon"]
92
I'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to
93
punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work
94
Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he
95
hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've
96
GOT to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination
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doc/sample1.txt
