Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twelfth chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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Today we'll be continuing The Adventures of.

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Chapter Twelve One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret troubles was that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about.

Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school.

Tom had struggled with his pride a few days and tried to whistle her down the wind, but failed.

He began to find himself hanging around her father's house nights and feeling very miserable.

She was ill.

What if she should die?

There was distraction in the thought.

He no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy.

The charm of life was gone.

There was nothing but dreariness left.

He put his hoop away and his bat.

There was no joy in them anymore.

His aunt was concerned.

She began to try all manner of remedies on him.

She was one of those people who were infatuated with patent medicines and all newfangled methods of producing health or mending it.

She was an inveterate experimenter in these things.

When something fresh in this line came.

Out, she was in a fever right away to try it.

Not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy.

She was a subscriber for all the health periodicals and phrenological frauds and the solemn ignorance they were inflated was with breath to her nostrils.

All the wrought they contained about ventilation.

And how to go to bed and how to get up and what to.

Eat and what to drink and how much exercise to take and what frame of mind to keep oneself in and.

What sort of clothing to wear was.

All gospel to her.

And she never observed that her health journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before.

She was as simple hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim.

She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with h*** following after.

But she never suspected that she was not an angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise to the suffering neighbors.

The water treatment was new now, and Ham's low condition was a windfall to her.

She had him out at daylight every.

Morning, stood him up in the woodshed.

And drowned him with a deluge of cold water.

Then she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him too.

Then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she sweated his soul clean and the yellow stains of it came through his pores, as Tom said.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected.

She added hot baths, sits baths, shower baths and plunges.

The boy remained as dismal as a hearse.

She began to assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister plasters.

She calculated his capacity as she would a jugs, and filled him up every day with quack cures.

Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time.

This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation.

This indifference must be broken up at any cost.

Now she heard of painkiller for the first time.

She ordered a lot at once.

She tasted it and was filled with gratitude.

It was simply fire in a liquid form.

She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to painkiller.

She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result.

Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again, for the indifference was broken up.

The boy could not have shown a wilder heartier interest if she had built a fire under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up.

This sort of life might be romantic enough in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it.

So he thought over various plans for relief and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of painkiller.

He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her.

If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight.

But since it was Tom.

She watched the bottle clandestinely.

She found that the medicine did really diminish.

But it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting room floor with it.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along purring, eyeing the teaspoon avoraciously and begging for a taste.

Tom said, don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter.

But Peter signified that he did want it.

You better make sure.

Peter was sure.

Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you because there ain't anything mean about me.

But if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self.

Peter was agreeable, so Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the painkiller.

Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air and then delivered a war whoop and set off round and round the room banging against furniture, upsetting flower pots and making general havoc.

Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around in a frenzy of enjoyment with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness.

Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path.

Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double Somersets deliver a final mighty hurrah and sail through the open window carrying the rest of the flower pots with him.

The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses.

Tom lay on the floor, expiring with laughter.

Tom, what on earth ails that cat?

I don't know, Aunt, gasped the boy.

Oh, I never see anything like it.

What did make him act so deed?

I don't know, Aunt Polly.

Cats always act so when they're having a good time.

Do they?

Do they?

There was something in the tone that made Tom apprehensive.

ESM, that is, I believe they do.

You do?

ESM.

The old lady was bending down, Tom watching with interest emphasized by anxiety.

Too late.

He divined her drift.

A handle of the telltale teaspoon was visible under the bed valance.

Aunt Polly took it, held it up.

Tom winced and dropped his eyes.

Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle his ear and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.

Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so for?

I'd done it out of pity for.

Him because he hadn't any aunt.

Hadn't any aunt?

You numb skull.

What has that got to do with it?

Heaps.

Because if he'd had one, she'd have burned him out herself.

She'd have roasted his bowels out of him without any more feeling than if he was a human.

Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse.

This was putting the thing in a new light.

What was cruelty to a cat might be cruelty to a boy too.

She began to soften.

She felt sorry.

Her eyes watered a little, and she put her hand on Tom's head and.

Said gently, I was meaning for the best, Tom.

And Tom, it did do you good.

Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle, peeping through his gravity.

I know you was meaning for the best, Auntie, and so was I with Peter.

It done him good, too.

I never see him get around.

So since I'll go along with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again, and.

You try and see if you can't.

Be a good boy for once, and you needn't take any more medicine.

Tom reached school ahead of time.

It was noticed that this strange thing had been occurring every day.

Later, lee.

And now, as usual of late, he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his comrades.

He was sick, he said, and he looked it.

He tried to seem to be looking everywhere, but whither, he was really looking down the road.

Presently, Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted.

He gazed a moment and then turned sorrowfully away.

When Jeff arrived, Tom accosted him and led up warily to opportunities for remark about Becky.

But the giddy lad never could see the bait.

Tom watched and watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight and hating the owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one.

At last, frock ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps.

He entered the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer.

Then one more frock passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart grave a great bound.

The next instant he was out and going on, yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing hamsprings, standing on his head, doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out all the while to see if Becky Thatcher was noticing.

But she seemed to be unconscious of it all.

She never looked.

Could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there?

He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity.

Came war.

Whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and fell.

Sprawling himself under Becky's nose, almost upsetting her.

And she turned with her nose in the air.

And he heard her say, some people.

Think they're mighty smart, always showing off.

Tom's cheeks burned, he gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and crestfallen.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a.

Bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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