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Book: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.txt
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d dollars, and invest for
me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us no receipt for
it.”
Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the
hare-lip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and
stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his
head and smiled proud. The doctor says:
“All right; I wash _my_ hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a
time ’s coming when you’re going to feel sick whenever you think of
this day.” And away he went.
“All right, doctor,” says the king, kinder mocking him; “we’ll try and
get ’em to send for you;” which made them all laugh, and they said it
was a prime good hit.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Well, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was
off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would
do for Uncle William, and she’d give her own room to Uncle Harvey,
which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her
sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a
pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley—meaning
me.
So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was
plain but nice. She said she’d have her frocks and a lot of other traps
took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey’s way, but he said
they warn’t. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a
curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an
old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all
sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up
a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and more
pleasanter for these fixings, and so don’t disturb them. The duke’s
room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.
That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there,
and I stood behind the king and the duke’s chairs and waited on them,
and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of
the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits
was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried
chickens was—and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to
force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop,
and said so—said “How _do_ you get biscuits to brown so nice?” and
“Where, for the land’s sake, _did_ you get these amaz’n pickles?” and
all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at
a supper, you know.
And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen
off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up
the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest
if I didn’t think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says:
“Did you ever see the king?”
“Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have—he goes to our church.” I
knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he
goes to our church, she says:
“What—regular?”
“Yes—regular. His pew’s right over opposite ourn—on t’other side the
pulpit.”
“I thought he lived in London?”
“Well, he does. Where _would_ he live?”
“But I thought _you_ lived in Sheffield?”
I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken
bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says:
“I mean he goes to our church regular when he’s i
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