Chapter 37 - Page 2

sort of care of 'em at your time of life."

"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it
oughtn't to be altogether my fault, because, you know,
I don't see them nor have nothing to do with them
except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've
ever lost one of them OFF of me."

"Well, it ain't YOUR fault if you haven't, Silas;
you'd a done it if you could, I reckon. And the shirt
ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a spoon gone;
and THAT ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only
nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf
never took the spoon, THAT'S certain."

"Why, what else is gone, Sally?"

"Ther's six CANDLES gone -- that's what. The rats
could a got the candles, and I reckon they did; I
wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the
way you're always going to stop their holes and don't
do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your
hair, Silas -- YOU'D never find it out; but you can't lay
the SPOON on the rats, and that I know."

"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it;
I've been remiss; but I won't let to-morrow go by
without stopping up them holes."

"Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. Matilda
Angelina Araminta PHELPS!"

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches
her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around
any. Just then the nigger woman steps on to the
passage, and says:

"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."

"A SHEET gone! Well, for the land's sake!"

"I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas,
looking sorrowful.

"Oh, DO shet up! -- s'pose the rats took the SHEET?
WHERE'S it gone, Lize?"

"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally.
She wuz on de clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone:
she ain' dah no mo' now."

"I reckon the world IS coming to an end. I NEVER
see the beat of it in all my born days. A shirt, and a
sheet, and a spoon, and six can --"

"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a
brass cannelstick miss'n."

"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet
to ye!"

Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a
chance; I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the
woods till the weather moderated. She kept a-raging
right along, running her insurrection all by herself,
and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at
last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that
spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, with her mouth
open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was
in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because
she says:

"It's JUST as I expected. So you had it in your
pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the
other