Приключения Тома Сойера / The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

”

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 - got back to whitewashing – принялся красить]. 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 impersonating a steamboat[7 - he was impersonating a steamboat – изображал пароход].

As he came closer, he called:

“Tom!”

No answer. Tom was whitewashing the fence; he surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Tom’s mouth watered for the apple, but he continued working. Ben said:

“Hello, old chap!”

Tom turned to Ben.

“Why, it’s you, Ben! I didn’t notice you.”

“I’m going swimming.

Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d rather work—wouldn’t you? Course you would!”

“What do you call work?”

“Why, isn’t THAT work?”

Tom continued his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer.”

“Don’t say you LIKE it. I won’t believe you!”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?’

That put the thing in a new light.

Ben stopped biting his apple. He was watching Tom’s every move and was getting more and more interested. At last he said:

“Tom, let ME whitewash a little.”

Tom considered it, and then said:

“If it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and Aunt Polly wouldn’t. But it’s the front fence; it must be done very carefully. There isn’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it should be done.”

“Oh, let me just try. Only just a little.