"TOM!"

No answer.

"TOM!"

No answer.

"What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!"

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked
over them about the room; then she put them up and
looked out under them. She seldom or never looked
THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were
her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built
for "style," not service -- she could have seen through
a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed
for a moment, and then 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 the 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 the open door and stood in it and looked
out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that
constituted the 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 that 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 that jam alone I'd skin
you. Hand me that switch."

The switch hovered in the air -- the peril was des-
perate --

"My! Look behind you, aunt!"

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts
out of danger. 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 look-
ing out for him by this time? But old fools is the big-
gest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays
them alike, 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 Lord's
truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the
child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and
suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the 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, some-
how. 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 woman is of
few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and
I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * and
[* Southwestern for "afternoon"]
I'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to
punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work
Saturdays, when all the boys is 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 the ruination
of the child."
