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- CHAPTER XVIII
That was Tom’s great secret—the scheme to return home with his brother
pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to the
Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six miles
below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the town
till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys
and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of
invalided benches.
At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to
Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of
talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said:
“Well, I don’t say it wasn’t a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody
suffering ’most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you
could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over
on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a
hint some way that you warn’t dead, but only run off.”
“Yes, you could have done that, Tom,” said Mary; “and I believe you
would if you had thought of it.”
“Would you, Tom?” said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. “Say,
now, would you, if you’d thought of it?”
“I—well, I don’t know. ’Twould ’a’ spoiled everything.”
“Tom, I hoped you loved me that much,” said Aunt Polly, with a grieved
tone that discomforted the boy. “It would have been something if you’d
cared enough to _think_ of it, even if you didn’t _do_ it.”
“Now, auntie, that ain’t any harm,” pleaded Mary; “it’s only Tom’s giddy
way—he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of anything.”
“More’s the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and
_done_ it, too. Tom, you’ll look back, some day, when it’s too late,
and wish you’d cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so
little.”
“Now, auntie, you know I do care for you,” said Tom.
“I’d know it better if you acted more like it.”
“I wish now I’d thought,” said Tom, with a repentant tone; “but I dreamt
about you, anyway. That’s something, ain’t it?”
“It ain’t much—a cat does that much—but it’s better than nothing. What
did you dream?”
“Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the
bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him.”
“Well, so we did. So we always do. I’m glad your dreams could take even
that much trouble about us.”
“And I dreamt that Joe Harper’s mother was here.”
“Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?”
“Oh, lots. But it’s so dim, now.”
“Well, try to recollect—can’t you?”
“Somehow it seems to me that the wind—the wind blowed the—the—”
“Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something. Come!”
Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then
said:
“I’ve got it now! I’ve got it now! It blowed the candle!”
“Mercy on us! Go on, Tom—go on!”
“And it seems to me that you said, ‘Why, I believe that that door—’”
“Go _on_, Tom!”
“Just let me study a moment—just a moment. Oh, yes—you said you believed
the door was open.”
“As I’m sitting here, I did! Didn’t I, Mary! Go on!”
“And then—and then—well I won’t be certain, but it seems like as if you
made Sid go and—and—”
“Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?”
“You made him—you—Oh, you made him shut it.”
“Well, for the land’s sake! I never heard the beat of that in all my
days! Don’t tell _me_ there ain’t anything in dreams, any more. Sereny
Harper shall know of this before I’m an hour older. I’d like to see her
get around _this_ with her rubbage ’bout superstition. Go on, Tom!”
“Oh, it’s all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I warn’t
_bad_, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more responsible
than—than—I think it was a colt, or something.”
“And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on, Tom!”
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