t, won't you? Well, I sh'd RECKON you won't!"

"No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me."

"Till I ASK you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I
lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask you
--or the likes of you."

"Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out, somehow.
They said you would, and I thought you would. But--" He stopped and
looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye
somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "Didn't YOU
think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?"

"Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't."

Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says:

"Tom, didn't YOU think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid
Sawyer--'"

"My land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young
rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her
off, and says:

"No, not till you've asked me first."

So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him
over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took
what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she says:

"Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for YOU at
all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him."

"It's because it warn't INTENDED for any of us to come but Tom," he says;
"but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too;
so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate
surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by
tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a
mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to
come."

"No--not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I
hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I
don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to
have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don't deny it, I
was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack."

We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the
kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families
--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a
cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold
cannibal in the morning.