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

up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went down,
being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We
set down, and she says:
"They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and
Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them-'comfort,' they say. Much of that
they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor named
Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three months,
and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he COULDN'T; so he
has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I reckon he's somebody
they think they better be on the good side of, for they've tried to please
him by hiring his no-account brother to help on the farm when they can't
hardly afford it, and don't want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?"
"They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly-all the
farmers live about a mile apart down there-and Brace Dunlap is a long
sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers.
He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud
of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I
judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking,
and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get
Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and
lovely as-well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas-why, it's pitiful,
him trying to curry favor that way-so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring
that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother."
"What a name-Jubiter! Where'd he get it?"
"It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long
before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first
time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown mole
the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little bits of
moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of Jubiter
and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they got to
calling him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall, and lazy, and sly,
and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, and wears
long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and Brace boards him
for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and despises him.
Jubiter is a twin."
"What's t'other twin like?"
"Just exactly like Jubiter-so they say; used to was, anyway, but he
hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen
or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away-up North
here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and
then, but that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they
say. They don't hear about him any more."
"What was his name?"
"Jake."
There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady
was thinking. At last she says:
"The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that
that man Jubiter gets your uncle into."
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says: