“What fellers?” I asked, cross-like, because I didn’t like being roused up.
“C-C-Christopher Columbus and George W-W-W-Washington,” he says, disgusted. “Who’d you think?”
“You mean Collins and the fat man?”
He grunted: “Uh-hup. While you was back of the barn whittlin’,” he says. “They went off disappointed. Seems like that f-f-fat feller don’t care much for walking.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Told ’em your uncle wouldn’t be b-b-back ’fore night.”
“Oh, go on to sleep,” Tallow snorted, from his bed; and so Mark and I kept quiet, and the first thing I knew I was being waked up by the worst racket I ever heard. It scared me so I jumped out of bed way into the middle of the room. For a minnit I couldn’t make out what was going on. It might have been a bear tearing down the house or an attack by Indians, for all I could make out. Then I got really waked up and recognized it was the old alarm-clock. It didn’t seem like I’d been to sleep at all, and it was so dark a black cat would have looked sort of gray if it had come into the room. The other fellows were stirring around.
“Time to get up,” I says.
“Doggone that clock,” says Tallow.
I guess that’s what we all thought, but nobody was willing to be the first one to back out, so we lighted a lamp and dressed. My, but it was chilly! When we opened the door and started outside it was like to frost-bite our ears. And everything was wet with dew; my feet were soaked before I’d gone a hundred feet.