<p>CHAPTER XXXVII.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“I’ve hunted high and I’ve hunted low, and it does beat
all what <i>has</i> become of your other shirt.”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“It’s most uncommon curious, I can’t understand it.
I know perfectly well I took it <i>off</i>, because—”</p>
<p>“Because you hain’t got but one <i>on</i>. Just <i>listen</i>
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 <i>do</i>
with ’m all is more’n I can make out. A body ’d
think you <i>would</i> learn to take some sort of care of ’em at
your time of life.”</p>
<p>“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 <i>off</i> of me.”</p>
<p>“Well, it ain’t <i>your</i> 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 <i>that</i>
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, <i>that’s</i>
certain.”</p>
<p>“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”</p>
<p>“Ther’s six <i>candles</i> 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—<i>you’d</i>
never find it out; but you can’t lay the <i>spoon</i> on the rats,
and that I know.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry; next year ’ll do. Matilda
Angelina Araminta <i>Phelps!</i>”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“Missus, dey’s a sheet gone.”</p>
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<p>“A <i>sheet</i> gone! Well, for the land’s sake!”</p>
<p>“I’ll stop up them holes to-day,” says Uncle Silas,
looking sorrowful.</p>
<p>“Oh, <i>do</i> shet up!—s’pose the rats took the <i>sheet</i>?
<i>where’s</i> it gone, Lize?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“I reckon the world <i>is</i> coming to an end. I <i>never</i>
see the beat of it in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a
spoon, and six can—”</p>
<p>“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey’s a
brass cannelstick miss’n.”</p>
<p>“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I’ll take a skillet to ye!”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“It’s <i>just</i> 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?”</p>
<p>“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—”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p><i>I’d</i> 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:</p>
<p>“Well, it ain’t no use to send things by <i>him</i> 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 <i>him</i> knowing it—stop up his rat-holes.”</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a
mighty nice old man. And always is.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons <i>yet</i>.”</p>
<p>She says:</p>
<p>“Go ’long to your play, and don’t bother me. I
know better, I counted ’m myself.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’ve counted them twice, Aunty, and I can’t make
but nine.”</p>
<p>She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count—anybody
would.</p>
<p>“I declare to gracious ther’ <i>ain’t</i> but nine!”
she says. “Why, what in the world—plague <i>take</i> the
things, I’ll count ’m again.”</p>
<p>So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says:</p>
<p>“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther’s <i>ten</i> now!”
and she looked huffy and bothered both. But Tom says:</p>
<p>“Why, Aunty, I don’t think there’s ten.”</p>
<p>“You numskull, didn’t you see me <i>count ’m?</i>”</p>
<p>“I know, but—”</p>
<p>“Well, I’ll count ’m <i>again</i>.”</p>
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<p>So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well,
she <i>was</i> 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 <i>now</i> 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 <i>did</i>; 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>care</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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