On Monday Tom didn’t want to go to school, but Aunt Polly got him out of bed, and then out of the house. In the street near the school he met his friend Huckleberry Finn. Huck had no mother, and his father drank whiskey all the time, so Huck lived in the streets. He didn’t go to school, he was always dirty, and he never had a new shirt. But he was happy. The mothers of St Petersburg didn’t like Huck, but Tom and his friends did.
‘Hello Huck!’ said Tom. ‘What have you got there?’
‘A dead cat.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked Tom.
I’m going to take it to the graveyard tonight,’ Huck said. ‘At midnight. A dead cat can call ghosts out of their graves.’
‘I never heard that,’ said Tom. ‘Is it true?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Huck. ‘Old Mrs Hopkins told me. Come with me and see. Or are you afraid of ghosts?’
‘Of course not!’ said Tom. ‘Come and meow for me at my window at eleven o’clock.’
