There, there, now, don t begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well your tooth _is_ loose, but you re not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen.
Tom said:
Oh, please, auntie, don t pull it out. It don t hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don t, auntie. I don t want to stay
home from school.
Oh, you don t, don t you? So all this row was because you thought you d
get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so,
and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your
outrageousness. By this time the dental instruments were ready. The old
lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom s tooth with a loop
and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and
suddenly thrust it almost into the boy s face. The tooth hung dangling
by the bedpost, now.
But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after
breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his
upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable
way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition;
and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and
homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent,
and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain
which he did not feel that it wasn t anything to spit like Tom Sawyer;
but another boy said, Sour grapes! and he wandered away a dismantled
hero.
Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
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