gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water

treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She

gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the

result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;

for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a

wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be

romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have

too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he

thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of

professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he

became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself

and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no

misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the

bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish,

but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a

crack in the sitting-room floor with it.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow

cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging

for a taste. Tom said:

Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."

But Peter signified that he did want it.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer