Your traps has been here
ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about
four times so as to have it hot and good when you
come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out,
and I declare I -- I -- why I could skin you alive! You
must be starving, poor things! -- set down, set down,
everybody; don't lose no more time."
It was good to be there again behind all that noble
corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could
ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he peeled off
one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many
layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was haul-
ing in the slack of it I was trying to study up what to
say about what kept us so long. When our plates was
all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked me, and
I says:
"Well, you see, -- er -- Mizzes --"
"Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you?
Have I ever been stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since
the day you stood in this room and I took you for Tom
Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though
you told me four thousand lies and I believed every
one of them like a simpleton? Call me Aunt Sally --
like you always done."
So I done it. And I says:
"Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along
afoot and take a smell of the woods, and we run across
Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to go with
them blackberrying to-night, and said they could bor-
row Jubiter Dunlap's dog, because he had told them
just that minute --"
"Where did they see him?" says the old man; and
when I looked up to see how HE come to take an intrust
in a little thing like that, his eyes was just burning into
me, he was that eager.
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