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14 Tom Sawyer Abroad
hankering and groveling around you when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you ; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to do is to wait.
Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was. It was a crusade.
" What's a crusade?" I says.
He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says:
" Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"
"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he—"
" Patent-right!" says he. *41 never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a kind of war."
I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca'm: |
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