fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--"

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

"I never did see the beat of that boy!"

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom.
So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and
shouted:

"Y-o-u-u TOM!"

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to
seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What IS that
truck?"

"I don't know, aunt."

"Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if
you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."

The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate--

"My! Look behind you, aunt!"

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The
lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and
disappeared over it.

His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.

"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days,
and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how
long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he
can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down
again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy,
and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile
the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for
us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my
own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash
him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so,
and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man
that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the
Scripture says, and I reckon it's so