| Share page |
|
Tom Sawyer, Detective 141
them— ' comfort,' they say. Much of that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor named Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three months, and at last they told him pint blank and once for all, he couldn't; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for they've tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?"
4'They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly — all the farmers live about a mile apart down there — and Brace Dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and lovely as — well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas — why, it's pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way— so hard pushed and poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother."
" What a name — Jubiter! Where'd he get it?" " It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first time he ever |
||