Huckleberry Finn - Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (reading books for 7 year olds TXT) 📗

you may say, when we were thinking to rob it back. I’m for ending it and heading out.”

 

That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would a been a little different, but now it made me feel bad and sad.

 

The king cuts in and says: “What! And not sell the other things? Walk off and leave eight or nine thousand dollars’ worth of land and furniture lying around just waiting to be pulled in? -- and all good, easy to sell things, too.”

 

The duke he complained; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn’t want to go no deeper -- didn’t want to rob the girls of everything they had.

 

“Why, how you talk!” says the king. “We won’t rob ‘em of nothing at all but just this money. The people that buys the place is the ones who will be hurting; because as soon as it’s found out that we didn’t own it -- which won’t be long after we’ve left -- the land won’t be theirs, and it’ll all go back to the girls. They’ll get their house back again, and that’s enough for them; they’re young and healthy, and can easily get jobs. They ain’t a-going to hurt. Why, just think -- there’s thousands and thousands that ain’t near as well off. Bless you, they ain’t got nothing to complain of.”

 

Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he still believed it was foolishness to stay with that doctor hanging over them. But the king says: “Curse the doctor! What do we care for him? Ain’t we got all the stupid people in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough part of any town?”

 

So they got ready to go down again.

 

The duke says: “I don’t think we put that money in a good place.”

 

That encouraged me. I’d started to think I weren’t going to get a sign of no kind to help me. The king says: “Why?”

 

“Because Mary Jane’ll be feeling very sad; and first thing you know the servant that does up the rooms will be told to box these clothes up and put ‘em away; and do you think a slave can run across money and not borrow some of it?”

 

“Your head’s done it right again, duke,” says the king; and he comes a-reaching under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stayed tight to the wall and kept very still, apart from shaking a little; and I was thinking about what they would say to me if they caught me; and I tried to think what I should do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I could think more than about half a thought, and he never knew I was around. They took and pushed the bag through a hole in the mattress that was under the feather bed, and forced it a foot or two up into the dried grass and said it was all right now, because a servant only makes up the feather bed, and don’t ever turn over the mattress only about two times a year, and so it weren’t in no danger of getting robbed now.

 

But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was half-way down the steps.

 

 

I felt my way along up to my room, to hide it there until I could find a way to do it better. I judged I better hide it outside the house somewhere, because if they missed it they would give the house a good going over: I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes all on; but I couldn’t a gone to sleep if I’d a wanted to, I was in such a hurry to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and the duke come up; so I got off my mattress and moved to the top of the ladder to my room, and waited to see if anything was going to happen down there. But nothing did.

 

So I held on until all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn’t started yet; and then I went quietly down the ladder.

 

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

I went up to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I walked along on my toes, and got down the steps all right.

 

There weren’t a sound anywhere.

 

 

I looked through an opening of the door to where the men that was watching the body was, and seen that they was all asleep on their chairs. In another room where the body itself was, there was a candle. The door was open; but I seen there weren’t nobody in there but the body of old Peter; so I went on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn’t there. Just then I heard someone coming down the steps, back behind me. I run in the other room and took a fast look around, and the only place I seen to hide the bag was in the box with the body. The cover was open only about a foot, showing the dead man’s face down in there, with a wet cloth over it. I pushed the money-bag in under the cover, just down below where his hands was crossed, which made me feel strange, they was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.

 

The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the box, very soft, and got down on her knees in front of it and looked in; then she put up a cloth to her eyes, and I see she started to cry. Her back was to me and I couldn’t hear her, but I was able to move quietly out the door behind her.

 

I went up to bed, feeling a little blue, because things had played out that way after I had took so much trouble and faced so much danger doing it. If it could stay where it was, all right; because when we got down the river a hundred miles or two I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up and get it; but that ain’t what’s going to happen; the thing that’s going to happen is, the money will be found when they come to screw on the cover. Then the king will get it again, and it’ll be a long day before he gives anyone another go at taking it. I wanted to go down and get it out, but it was too dangerous. Every minute it was getting earlier, and pretty soon them watchers would start to wake up, and I might get caught -- with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn’t told me to take. I don’t wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.

 

When I got down there in the morning the room with the body was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There weren’t nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our lot. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn’t tell.

 

Toward the middle of the day the funeral man come with his helper, and they put the box in the middle of the room on two chairs, and then put all our chairs in lines, and borrowed more from the neighbours until all the rooms was full. I see the cover for the box was the way it was before, but I wasn’t brave enough to go and look in under it, with people around.

 

Then the people started to come in, and those two dogs and the girls took chairs in the front at the head of the body, and for a half an hour the people walked around slow, in a line, and looked down at the dead man’s face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very quiet and serious, only the girls and the king and the duke holding cloths to their eyes and keeping their heads forward, and crying softly. There weren’t no other sound but the rubbing of feet on the floor and blowing noses -- because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places apart from church.

 

When the place was as full as it could be the funeral man he moved around in his black gloves with his soft ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all right and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up doors to side rooms, and done it all with movements of his head, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the smoothest, softest, quietest man I ever seen; and there weren’t no more smile to him than there is to a piece of meat.

 

They had borrowed a little piano like instrument that used wind to work -- a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty loud and sickly, and everybody joined in singing, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, the way I saw it. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and serious, and started to talk; and straight off the most awful noise broke out in the basement; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful noise, and he kept it up right along; the preacher he had to stand there, over the body, and wait -- you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was right down embarrassing for everyone, and nobody didn’t seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged funeral man make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, “Don’t you worry -- just trust me.” Then he leaned down and started to move along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people’s heads. He moved along, with the noise getting worse and worse all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he goes down the steps to the basement. Then in about two seconds we heard a loud hit, and the dog he finished up with a most surprised cry or two, and then everything was dead quiet, and the preacher started his serious talk where he left off.

 

In a minute or two here comes this funeral man’s back and shoulders moving along the wall again; and so he went around three sides of the room, and then stood up, and half covered his mouth with his hands, and leaned his neck out toward the preacher, over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of rough whisper, “He had a rat!”

 

 

Then he dropped down and moved along the wall back to his place. You could see that the people were glad to hear it, because they all wanted to know what had been going on. A little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There weren’t no more liked man in town than what that funeral man was.

 

Well, the preaching was very good, but poison long; and then the king he pushed in and got off some of his same old foolishness, and at last the job was through, and the funeral man started to come up on the box with his screw-driver. I was worried then, and watched him pretty closely. But he never made any trouble at all; just moved the cover along as smooth as pig fat, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn’t know if the money was in there or not. So, says I, what if someone has robbed that bag secretly? -- now how do I know if I should write to Mary Jane or not? What