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- 5318
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- CHAPTER XX
There was something about Aunt Polly’s manner, when she kissed Tom, that
swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy again. He
started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky Thatcher at the
head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his manner. Without a
moment’s hesitation he ran to her and said:
“I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I’m so sorry. I won’t ever, ever
do that way again, as long as ever I live—please make up, won’t you?”
The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:
“I’ll thank you to keep yourself _to_ yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I’ll
never speak to you again.”
She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not
even presence of mind enough to say “Who cares, Miss Smarty?” until the
right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a
fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were
a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently
encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She hurled
one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to Becky, in
her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to “take in,”
she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured spelling-book.
If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred Temple, Tom’s
offensive fling had driven it entirely away.
Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself.
The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied
ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but
poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village
schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and
absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept
that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was
perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy
and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two theories
were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case.
Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the door, she
noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious moment. She
glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant she had the
book in her hands. The titlepage—Professor Somebody’s _Anatomy_—carried
no information to her mind; so she began to turn the leaves. She came at
once upon a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece—a human figure,
stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell on the page and Tom Sawyer
stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky
snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the
pictured page half down the middle. She thrust the volume into the desk,
turned the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation.
“Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a person
and look at what they’re looking at.”
“How could I know you was looking at anything?”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you’re
going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I’ll be
whipped, and I never was whipped in school.”
Then she stamped her little foot and said:
“_Be_ so mean if you want to! I know something that’s going to happen.
You just wait and you’ll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!”—and she flung
out of the house with a new explosion of crying.
Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said
to himself:
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