and had no adventurous, trouble-some ways.
While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and
very deep for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like
many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she
was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she
loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low
cunning. Said she:
Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn t it?
Yes m.
Powerful warm, warn t it?
Yes m.
Didn t you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?
A bit of a scare shot through Tom a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He
searched Aunt Polly s face, but it told him nothing. So he said:
No m well, not very much.
The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom s shirt, and said:
But you ain t too warm now, though. And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing
that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew
where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:
Some of us pumped on our heads mine s damp yet. See?
Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:
Tom, you didn t have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!
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