“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 a while, 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 ruther 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 ruther 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!”