"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer, Detective (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do that, you'll
put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN go, just so as
to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but
it warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he
said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front
steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt
Polly with a letter in her hand and says:
"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw-your aunt
Sally wants you."
I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his
aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock,
and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish,
with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose it if he
didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he set there
and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't know what to
do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:
"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got
to be excused-for the present."
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence
of it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and
this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and
throwing it away?"
But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:
"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why,
she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and
dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You
lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her."
Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was
always right-the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and ready
for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly was all
straight again, and she let fly. She says:
"You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all
my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off
and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what
you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse you-with a
hickory!"
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let
on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged
me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going traveling.
And he says:
"Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't
know any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride won't
let her take it back."
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would
finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and
sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle
in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all