The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Which one?”

“I don’t know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it’s—”

“Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t Hanner?”

“I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.”

“My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?”

“It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”

“Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her?”

I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:

“Mumps.”

“Mumps your granny! They don’t set up with people that’s got the mumps.”

“They don’t, don’t they? You better bet they do with these mumps. These mumps is different. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”

“How’s it a new kind?”

“Because it’s mixed up with other things.”

“What other things?”

“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysipelas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don’t know what all.”

“My land! And they call it the mumps?”

“That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”

“Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?”

“Why, because it is the mumps. That’s what it starts with.”

“Well, ther’ ain’t no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pisón, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, ‘Why, he stumped his toe.’ Would ther’ be any sense in that? No. And ther’ ain’t no sense in this, nuther. Is it ketching?”

“Is it ketching? Why, how you talk. Is a harrow catching – in the dark? If you don’t hitch on to one tooth, you’re bound to on another, ain’t you? And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say – and it ain’t no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good.”

“Well, it’s awful, I think,” says the hare-lip. “I’ll go to Uncle Harvey and—”

“Oh, yes,” I says, “I would. Of course I would. I wouldn’t lose no time.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?”

“Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain’t your uncles obleeged to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? You know they’ll wait for you. So fur, so good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, ain’t he? Very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a ship clerk? – so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now you know he ain’t. What will he do, then? Why, he’ll say, ’It’s a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it’s my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she’s got it.’ But never mind, if you think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”

“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane’s got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins.”

“Well, anyway, maybe you’d better tell some of the neighbors.”

“Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can’t you see that they’d go and tell? Ther’ ain’t no way but just to not tell anybody at all.”

“Well, maybe you’re right – yes, I judge you are right.”

“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out awhile, anyway, so he won’t be uneasy about her?”

“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, ’Tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I’ve run over the river to see Mr.’—Mr. – what is the name of that rich family your uncle Peter used to think so much of? – I mean the one that—”

“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain’t it?”

“Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can’t ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle Peter would rather they had it than anybody else; and she’s going to stick to them till they say they’ll come, and then, if she ain’t too tired, she’s coming home; and if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don’t say nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps – which ’ll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know it, because she told me so herself.”

“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.

Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn’t say nothing because they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would rather Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat – I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t ‘a’ done it no neater himself. Of course he would ‘a’ throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up to it.

Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.

But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold – everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they’d got to work that off – I never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting to swallow everything. Well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:

“Here’s your opposition line! here’s your two sets o’ heirs to old Peter Wilks – and you pays your money and you takes your choice!”

Chapter XXIX

They was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls, how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn’t see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. I reckoned they’d turn pale. But no, nary a pale did they turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that’s googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see straight off he pronounced like an Englishman – not the king’s way, though the king’s was pretty good for an imitation. I can’t give the old gent’s words, nor I can’t imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this:

“This is a surprise to me which I wasn’t looking for; and I’ll acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain’t very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he’s broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks’s brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can’t hear nor speak – and can’t even make signs to amount to much, now’t he’s only got one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. But up till then I won’t say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait.”

So him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out:

“Broke his arm—very likely, ain’t it? – and very convenient, too, for a fraud that’s got to make signs, and ain’t learnt how. Lost their baggage! That’s mighty good! – and mighty ingenious – under the circumstances!”

So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads – it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentlemen said, and was listening to the king now. And when the king got done this husky up and says:

“Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when’d you come to this town?”

“The day before the funeral, friend,” says the king.

“But what time o’ day?”

“In the evenin’—’bout an hour er two before sundown.”

“How’d you come?”

“I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati.”