ouldn't get the words out fast enough, and
she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer
was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave
her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated
with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let
anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and
had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm:

"And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally--"

"Shet up!" she says, "I don't want to hear another word out of you."

So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about
that delay. Tom done it elegant.

CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT'S VIGIL

BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then;
but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt
Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good
humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self,
and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old
man he didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and
restless, and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of
heart-breaking to see him so sad and troubled and worried.

By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the
door and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and
scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his
brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse
Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so
sharp and fractious before. He says:

"Am I his brother's keeper?" And then he kind of wilted together,
and looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says,
very gentle: "But you needn't say that, Billy; I was took sudden and
irritable, and I ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible.
Tell him he ain't here."

And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards
and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands
through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she
whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed
him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles
come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was
about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in
his sleep considerable more now than he us