“Who gits it, Mars Tom?”
“Why, we do.”
“En who gits de apology?”
“The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take the apology, if we want to, and let the gov’ment take the money.”
“How much money will it be, Mars Tom?”
“Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three dollars apiece, and I don’t know but more.”
“Well, den, we’ll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de ’pology. Hain’t dat yo’ notion, too? En hain’t it yourn, Huck?”
We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as any, so we agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says:
“Yes; the little ones does.”
We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just like what the man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs of stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn’t be clumb the way you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and you have to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids warn’t far away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs crawling, we was so high above them.