little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a burden to
the children. They had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them
up.
In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the deserted
schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found nothing
there to comfort her. She soliloquized:
Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But I haven t got
anything now to remember him by. And she choked back a little sob.
Presently she stopped, and said to herself:
It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn t say
that I wouldn t say it for the whole world. But he s gone now; I ll
never, never, never see him any more.
This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls playmates of Tom s
and Joe s came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and talking
in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they saw
him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with awful
prophecy, as they could easily see now!) and each speaker pointed out
the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and then added
something like and I was a-standing just so just as I am now, and as if
you was him I was as close as that and he smiled, just this way and then
something seemed to go all over me, like awful, you know and I never
thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now!
Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and
many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or
less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided
who _did_ see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them,
the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance,
and were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had
no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the
remembrance:
Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.
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