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
astudying 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 tallowdrip 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.