his Aunt Polly wouldn’t let him quit school and go traipsing off somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt Polly with a letter in her hand and says: 

 “Tom, I reckon you’ve got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw—your aunt Sally wants you.” 

 I ’most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose it if he didn’t speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn’t know what to do; then he says, very ca’m, and I could a shot him for it: 

 “Well,” he says, “I’m right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to be excused—for the present.” 

 His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of it that she couldn’t say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper: 

 “Ain’t you got any sense? Sp’iling such a noble chance as this and throwing it away?” 

 But he warn’t disturbed. He mumbled back: 

 “Huck Finn, do you want me to let her see how bad I want to go? Why, she’d begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and dangers and objections, and first you know she’d take it all back. You lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her.” 

 Now I never would ’a’ thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was always right—the levelest head I ever see, and always at himself and ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly was all straight again, and she let fly. She says: 

I reckon I got to be excused

 “You’ll be excused! you will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all my days! The idea of you talking like that to me! Now take yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what you’ll be excused from and what you won’t, I lay I’ll excuse you—with a hickory!” 

 She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged me, he 

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