He said he couldn't scarcely
believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from
on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody
give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could
git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the
world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land
wherever he wanted to.
When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences
that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you
feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the
subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and
before you can pull your mind together and DO something, that silence has
got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he
was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. Well, Tom he
glowered at me a minute, and says:
"Come, out with it. What do you think?"
I says:
"Tom Sawyer, YOU don't believe that, yourself."
"What's the reason I don't? What's to hender me?"
"There's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all."
"What's the reason it couldn't happen?"
"You tell me the reason it COULD happen."
"This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon."
"WHY is it?"
"WHY is it? I never saw such an idiot.
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