_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 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’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 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 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’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 cler 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 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
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
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.