第73章

BY and by it was getting-up time.So I come down the ladder and started for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd been packing things in it -- getting ready to go to England.But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying.I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would.I went in there and says:

"Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can't -- most always.Tell me about it."So she done it.And it was the niggers -- I just expected it.She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know HOW she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn't ever going to see each other no more -- and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:

"Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't EVER going to see each other any more!""But they WILL -- and inside of two weeks -- and I KNOW it!" says I.

Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it AGAIN, say it AGAIN, say it AGAIN!

I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place.

I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out.So I went to studying it out.Isays to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway;and yet here's a case where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly SAFER than a lie.I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular.

I never see nothing like it.Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to.Then I says:

"Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days?""Yes; Mr.Lothrop's.Why?"

"Never mind why yet.If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks -- here in this house -- and PROVEhow I know it -- will you go to Mr.Lothrop's and stay four days?""Four days!" she says; "I'll stay a year!""All right," I says, "I don't want nothing more out of YOU than just your word -- I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible." She smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, "If you don't mind it, I'll shut the door -- and bolt it."Then I come back and set down again, and says:

"Don't you holler.Just set still and take it like a man.I got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it.These uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds -- regular dead-beats.There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand the rest middling easy."It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times -- and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says:

"The brute! Come, don't waste a minute -- not a SECOND -- we'll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!"Says I:

"Cert'nly.But do you mean BEFORE you go to Mr.Lothrop's, or --""Oh," she says, "what am I THINKING about!" she says, and set right down again."Don't mind what I said -- please don't -- you WON'T, now, WILL you?" Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first."I never thought, I was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, and I won't do so any more.You tell me what to do, and whatever you say I'll do it.""Well," I says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not -- Idruther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble.Well, we got to save HIM, hain't we? Of course.Well, then, we won't blow on them."Saying them words put a good idea in my head.I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave.

But I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night.I says:

"Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay at Mr.Lothrop's so long, nuther.How fur is it?""A little short of four miles -- right out in the country, back here.""Well, that 'll answer.Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again --tell them you've thought of something.If you get here before eleven put a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait TILL eleven, and THENif I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe.Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed.""Good," she says, "I'll do it."

"And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.""Stand by you! indeed I will.They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!"she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.