Adventures of Pinocchio | Page 4

will steal sheep."
The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:
"Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it."
"Don't you crowd me now; you better look out."
"Well, you SAID you'd do it--why don't you do it?"
"By jingo! for two cents I WILL do it."
The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out with derision.
Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys were rolling and tumbling in the
dirt, gripped together like cats; and for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each
other's hair and clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered themselves
with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and through the fog of battle Tom
appeared, seated astride the new boy, and pounding him with his fists. "Holler 'nuff!" said
he.
The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage.
"Holler 'nuff!"--and the pounding went on.
At last the stranger got out a smothered "'Nuff!" and Tom let him up and said:
"Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next time."
The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing, snuffling, and
occasionally looking back and shaking his head and threatening what he would do to
Tom the "next time he caught him out." To which Tom responded with jeers, and started
off in high feather, and as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone,
threw it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like an antelope.
Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he lived. He then held a position
at the gate for some time, daring the enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made
faces at him through the window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and
called Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went away; but he
said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy.
He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in at the window, he
uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state his
clothes were in her resolution to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor
became adamantine in its firmness.

CHAPTER II
SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and
brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music
issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The
locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill,
beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough
away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long- handled brush. He
surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon
his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and
existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak
with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box
discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals.
Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before,
but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump.
White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting,
trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although
the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of
water under an hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:
"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some."
Jim shook his head and said:
"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis water an' not stop foolin'
roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she
tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own business--she 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de
whitewashin'."
"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always talks. Gimme the
bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't ever know."
"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me. 'Deed she