EE 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 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 do