The story am about to tell is very educative and this is the first season of it.
Follow the story carefully .
Tom!!!?
No answer
Tom!!?
No answer
"What's gone with that boy , i wonder ? You Tom!"
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them, about the room; the she put them up and looked out under them.
She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy, for they were her state pair, the pride of her heart , and were built for a "style" not service; she could have seen through a pair of stove lids as well . She looked perplexed a moment and said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear, "Well, I lay if I get hold of you, I'll _____"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with a broom and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"
She went to open the door and stood in it, and looked out among the tomato vines and "Jimpson" weeds that constituted garden . No Tom.
So she lifted up her voice , at an angle calculated for distance, and shouted .
"Y-o-u-u Tom!?"
There was a slight noise behind her, and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. "
There! I might 'a thought of the closet . "what you been doing in there!? "
"Nothing".
"Nothing! Look at your hands, and look at your mouth. What is that truck ?"
"I don't know, aunt."
"Well, I know . It's jam, that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you didn't let jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."
The switch hovered in the air . The peril was desperate.
"My! Look behind you, aunt!"
The old lady whirled around and snatched her skirt out of danger ,and the lad fled, on the instant, scrambled up the high board fence, and disappeared over it.
His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh.
"Hang the boy! Can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fool there is. Can't learn any old dog new tricks,as the saying is . But my goodness , he never plays them alike as two days ,and how is a body to know what's coming? He pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up , and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute , or make me laugh, it's all down again, and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lords truth ,goodness knows. Spare the rode and spill the child, as the good books says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both , I know. He's full of old scratch, but laws-a-me! He's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow.
Every time I let him off my conscience does hurt me so; and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well , man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckons its so. He'll play hookey this evening,* and I'll just be obliged to make him work tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work on Saturdays, when all the boys are having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be ruination of the child".
Tom did play hockey, and had a very good time. He got back home barely in season to help Jim , the small coloured boy , saw next day's wood , and spilt the kindlings before supper ____ at least he was there in time to tell his adventure to Jim .
(To be continued)....
Stay close for the episode 2
