"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer, Detective (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a dangerous life, and-He
give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person that's listening. We
didn't say anything, and so it was very still for a second or so, and
there warn't no sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the
chug-chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and
how Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry
Benny and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him
and Uncle Silas quarreling all the time-and then he let go and laughed.
"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle,
and does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard any. How do
they talk about me these days?"
"Who?"
"The farmers-and the family."
"Why, they don't talk about you at all-at least only just a mention,
once in a long time."
"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?"
"Because they think you are dead long ago."
"No! Are you speaking true?-honor bright, now." He jumped up, excited.
"Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive."
"Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide me and
save my life. You keep mum. Swear you'll keep mum-swear you'll never,
never tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted
day and night, and dasn't show his face! I've never done you any harm;
I'll never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to
me and help me save my life."
We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he
couldn't love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was
all he could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it,
and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn
again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue
goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you
ever see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked us if he looked
like his brother Jubiter, now.
"No," Tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the
long hair."
"All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I get there;
then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as being a
stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. What do you think?"
Tom he studied awhile, then he says:
"Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you
don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk-it
ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. I mean, if you talk, won't people
notice that your voice is just like Jubiter's; and mightn't it make them
think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all
this time under another name?"
"By George," he says, "you're a sharp one! You're perfectly right. I've
got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. If I'd a struck
for home and forgot that little detail-However, I wasn't striking for