Page:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).pdf/314

Rh "Mumps your granny! They don't set up with people that's got the mumps."

"They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with these mumps. These mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said."

"How's it a new kind?"

"Because it's mixed up with other things."

"What other things?"

"Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysipelas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain fever, and I don't know what all."

"My land! And they call it the mumps?"

"That's what Miss Mary Jane said."

"Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?"

"Why, because it is the mumps. That's what it starts with."

"Well, ther' ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, "Why, he stumped his toe.' Would ther' be any sense in that? No. And ther' ain't no sense in this, nuther. Is it ketching?"

"Is it ketching? Why, how you talk. Is a harrow catching?–in the dark? If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, aint you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say—and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good."

"Well, it's awful, I think," says the hare-lip. "I'll go to Uncle Harvey and—"

"Oh, yes," I says, "I would. Of course I would. I wouldn't lose no time."

"Well, why wouldn't you?"