Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-seventh chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter 37 that was all fixed.

So then we went away and went to the rubbish pile in the backyard where they kept the old boots and rags and pieces of bottles and wore out tin things and all such truck and scratched around and found an old tin wash pan and stopped up the holes as well as we could to bake the pie in and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally's apron pocket, which was hanging on a chair and the other.

We stuck in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau because we heard the children say their paw and Ma was going to the runaway servant's house this morning.

And then we went to breakfast.

And Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat pocket.

And Aunt Sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come, she was hot and red and cross and couldn't hardly wait.

For the blessing.

And then she went to slicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other and says, I've hunted high and I've hunted low.

And it does beat all.

What has become of your other shirt?

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things and a hard piece of corn crust started down my throat after it got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing worm and let a cry out of him the size of a war.

Whoop.

And Tom, he turned kind of blue around the gills.

And it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute, or as much as that.

And I would have sold out for half price if there was a bidder.

But after that we was all right again.

It was a sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.

Uncle Silas, he says it's most uncommon curious.

I can't understand it.

I know perfectly well I took it off because because you hadn't got one on.

Just listen at the man.

I know you took it off and know it by a better way than your wool gathering memory, too, because it was on the clothesline yesterday.

I see it there myself, but it's gone.

That's the long and the short of it.

And you'll just have to change to a red flannel one till I can get time to make a new one.

And it'll be the third I've made in two years.

It just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts.

And whatever you do manage to do with them is all.

More than I can make out a bodied think you would learn to take some sort of care of them at your time of life.

I know it's, 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 have done it if you could, I reckon.

And the shirt ain't all that's gone.

Another, there's a spoon gone and that ain't all.

There was ten and now there'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?

There are six candles gone, that's what.

The rats could have 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 there weren'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 tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes.

Oh, I wouldn't hurry.

Next year I'll do.

Matilda, Angelina, Arimenta, Phelps whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar bowl without fooling around.

Any, just then, the servant woman steps onto the passage and says, Mrs.

Days, a sheet gone.

A sheet gone.

Well, for the land's sake, I'll stop up them holes today, says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

Oh, do shut up.

Suppose the rats took the sheet.

Where's it gone?

Lies blood.

Goodness.

I ain't no notion, Miss Sally.

She was on the clothesline yesterday, but she done gone.

She ain't done no more.

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 ken.

Mrs.

Comes a young wench day is a brass candlestick missing?

Clear out from here, you hussey, or I'll take a skillet to ye.

Well, she was just a violing 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 ride 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 Jerusalem or somewhere, but not long, because she says it's just as I expected.

So you had it in your pocket all the time and like, is not you've got the other things there, too.

How did get there?

I really don't know, Sally, he said, kind of apologizing or, you know, I would tell.

I was studying over my texts in act 17 before breakfast, and I reckon I put it there, not noticing meaning to put my testament in, and it must be so, because my testament ain't in.

But I'll go and see.

And if the testament is where I had it, I'll know I didn't put it in.

And that will show that I laid the testament down and took up the spoon and oh, for land's sake, give a body a rest.

Go long now, the whole kit and billing of ye, and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my peace of mind.

I'd have heard her if she'd just said it to herself, let alone speaking it out.

And I'd have got up and obeyed her if I'd have been dead.

As we was passing through the setting room, the old man, he took up his hat and the shingle nail fell out on the floor and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantle shelf and never said nothing and went out tom see him do it and remembered about the spoon and says, well, it ain't no use to send things by him no more.

He ain't reliable then, he says, but he'd done us a good turn with the spoon anyway without knowing it.

And so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it, stop up his rat holes.

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour.

But we'd done the job tight and good in ship shape.

Then we heard steps on the stairs and blowed out our light and hid.

And here comes the old man with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in the other, looking as absent minded as year before last.

He went to mooning around first to one rat hole and then another, till he'd been to them all.

Then he stood about five minutes picking tallow drip off his candle and thinking.

Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying well, for the life of me, I can't remember when I'd done it.

I could show her now that I weren't to blame on account of the rats, but never mind, let it go.

I reckon it wouldn't do no good.

And so he went on to Mumbling upstairs, and then we left.

He was a mighty nice old man, and always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we'd got to have it.

So we took a think.

When he had ciphered it out, he told me how he was to do.

Then he went and waited around the spoon basket till we see Aunt Sally coming.

And then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side.

And I slid one of them up my sleeve.

And Tom says, Why ain't Sally, there ain't but nine spoons yet?

She says, Go along to your play and don't bother me, I know better.

I counted them myself.

Well, I've counted them twice, Auntie, and I can't make but nine.

She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count.

Anybody would.

I declare to gracious, there ain't but nine.

She says, Why, what in the world?

Plague.

Take the things, I'll count them again.

So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says, hang the troublesome rubbish, there's ten now.

And she looked huffy and bothered both.

But Tom says, why, auntie, I don't think there's ten you numb skull.

Didn't you see me count them?

I know, but well, I'll count them again.

So I smoutched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time.

Well, she was in a tearing way, just a trembling all over, she was so mad.

But she counted and counted till she got that adult.

She'd start to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes and so three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong.

Then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley west.

And she said, clear out and let her have some peace.

And if we come bothering around her again, betwixt that in dinner she'd skin us.

So we had the OD spoon and dropped it in her apron pocket while she was giving us our sailing orders.

And Jim got it all right along with her shingle nail before noon.

We was very well satisfied with this business.

And Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life and wouldn't believe she'd.

Counted them right?

If she did and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days, he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them anymore.

So he put the sheet back on the line that night and stole one out of her closet.

And kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets.

She had anymore and she didn't care and weren't going to bully Rag the rest of her soul out about it and wouldn't count them again not to save her life.

She'd rather die first.

So we was all right.

Now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed up counting.

And as to the candlestick, it weren't no consequence.

It would blow over by and by.

But that pie was a job.

We had no end of trouble with that pie.

We fixed it up way down in the woods and cooked it there, and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory, too, but not all in one day.

And we had to use up three wash pans full of flour before we got through.

And we got burnt pretty much all over in places and eyes put out with the smoke, because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in.

But of course, we thought of the right way at last, which was to cook the latter two in the pie.

So then we laid in with Jim the second night and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together.

And long before daylight, we had a lovely rope that you could hang a person with.

We let on it took nine months to make it, and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into the pie being made of a whole sheet.

That way there was rope enough for 40 pies if we'd have wanted them, and plenty left over for soup or sausage or anything you choose.

We could have had a whole dinner, but we didn't need it all we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away.

We didn't cook no pies in the wash pan, afraid the solder would melt.

But Uncle Silas, he had a noble brass warming pan which he thought considerable of because it belonged to one of his ancestors with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror and the Mayflower or one of them early ships and was hid away up Garrett with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable.

Not on account of being any account, because they weren't, but on account of them being relics, you know?

And we snaked her out private and took her down there.

But she failed on the first pies because we didn't know how.

But she come up smiling on the last one.

We took and lined her with dough and set her in the coals and loaded her up with rag rope and put on a dough roof and shut down the lid and put hot embers on top and stood off five foot with a long handle.

Cool and comfortable.

And in 15 minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at, but the person that edit would want to fetch a couple of CAGs of toothpicks along for if that rope ladder weren't cramp him down to business.

I don't know nothing what I'm talking about, and lay him in enough stomachache to last him till next time, too.

Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan, and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles.

And so Jim got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself, he busted into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick and scratched the marks on a tin plate and throwed it out the window hole.

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 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at Bite at a Timebooks.com and check out the shop.

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