[5].’
When Tom’s turned to go, the new boy took a stone, threw it, hit him Tom between the shoulders and then ran away as fast as he could. Tom chased him home, and waited at the gate for some time, inviting the enemy to come outside. At last the enemy’s mother appeared, and called Tom a bad, evil child.
Tom got home rather late that night, and when he climbed in through the window, he was caught by his aunt immediately. When she saw the state of his clothes her resolution to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became set in stone.
Saturday morning came, and all the summer world was bright and fresh. There was a song in every heart and a smile on every face.
But Tom was not very happy when he appeared in the street with a bucket of whitewash and a brush with a long handle. When he looked at the fence, so long and high, he felt depressed. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the top plank; repeated the motion; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the enormous continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down in the shade, discouraged.
Then he saw Jim, a slave boy, who was running out of the gate with a bucket. Tom himself had always hated bringing water from the town pump. But it seemed better than whitewashing. Tom said:
“I say, Jim, I’ll bring the water if you whitewash a part of the fence.”
Jim shook his head and said:
“I can’t, master Tom. Your aunt said you had to do it all. She’ll be angry if she learns that I helped you.”
“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket—I will be gone only a minute. She won’t ever know.”
When the boys noticed Aunt Polly coming out of the house Jim ran away with his bucket and Tom got back to whitewashing[6]. But his energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day. He got out his wealth out of his pocket and examined it—bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not enough to buy even half an hour of pure freedom.
At this dark and hopeless moment he found a way out.
He took up his brush and went to work. Ben Rogers—the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule Tom had been dreading—was walking along the street eating an apple. From time to time he produced melodious sounds: ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was