her
ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she
grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When
poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept
exclaiming: "Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience
at last, and said, "Oh, don't bother me! I don't care for them!" and
burst into tears, and got up and walked away.

Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she
said:

"Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate you!"

So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said
she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on,
crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was
humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl
had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer.
He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him.
He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much
risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his
opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and
poured ink upon the page.

Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act,
and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now,
intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their
troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she
had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she
was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with
shame. She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged
spelling-book's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain.

CHAPTER XIX

TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt
said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an
unpromising market:

"Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!"

"Auntie, what have I done?"

"Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an
old softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage
about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that
you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I
don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes
me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make
such a fool of myself and never say a word."

This was a new