school
let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it.

"Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole
town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is
aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw
this town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch
you out! I'll just take and--"

And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy
--pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You
holler 'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the
imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction.

Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of
Amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the
other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but
as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph
began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness
followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up 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