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- 2412
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- 2026-01-28T02:26:17.020Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 2339
- text
- CHAPTER VII
The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas
wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed
to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead.
There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days.
The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed
the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the
flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a
shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds
floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible
but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom’s heart ached to be free, or
else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time.
His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of
gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively
the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on
the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that
amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when
he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and
made him take a new direction.
Tom’s bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and
now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in
an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn
friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a
pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.
The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were
interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit
of the tick. So he put Joe’s slate on the desk and drew a line down the
middle of it from top to bottom.
“Now,” said he, “as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and
I’ll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side,
you’re to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over.”
“All right, go ahead; start him up.”
The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe
harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This
change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with
absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the
two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all
things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as
anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would
have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom’s fingers would
be twitching to begin, Joe’s pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was too
strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was angry in
a moment. Said he:
“Tom, you let him alone.”
“I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe.”
“No, sir, it ain’t fair; you just let him alone.”
“Blame it, I ain’t going to stir him much.”
“Let him alone, I tell you.”
“I won’t!”
“You shall—he’s on my side of the line.”
“Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?”
“I don’t care whose tick he is—he’s on my side of the line, and you
sha’n’t touch him.”
“Well, I’ll just bet I will, though. He’s my tick and I’ll do what I
blame please with him, or die!”
- title
- Chunk 1