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.