University of Virginia Library

Chapter XXXVII.

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.

[ILLUSTRATION]

the rubbage-pile.

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
war-whoop, 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'es-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 onto 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
Uncles Silas, looking sorrowful.

[ILLUSTRATION]

"missus, dey's a sheet gone."

"Oh, do shet up!—spose 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's-line
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 ship-shape. 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.

[ILLUSTRATION]

in a tearing way.

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 said she didn't
care, and warn't agoing 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 washpans

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 in 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.

[ILLUSTRATION]

one of his ancesters.

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 washpan, 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.