Short-Answer Quizzes: Chapters 26 and 27
Study Questions
1. Why do the women insult their own food?
2. What incident in the novel convinces Huck that he must get the money back to the Wilks girls?
3. In what way will Huck get the money from the king and the duke?
4. Where does Huck hurriedly hide the money? Why does he choose this particular spot?
5. How do the king and the duke justify selling the property so soon after the funeral?
6. Where do the slaves go when they are sold?
7. Why does the king sell the slaves the day after the funeral? How does the duke feel about this?
8. Why does the duke wish he had kept the slaves?
9. How do the Wilks girls react when the slaves are sold?
10. Why doesn’t Huck tell on the king and the duke when they allow the slaves to be separated from their families?
Answers
1. The women make degrading comments about their food so that they can elicit
compliments from their guests.
2. The kindness of Mary Jane and Susan, and Joanna’s apology for her accusations while they are eating in the kitchen convinces Huck that these girls do not deserve to be defrauded by the king and the duke.
3. Huck decides that stealing the money would be the safest course of action.
4. Huck hides the money in Peter Wilks’ coffin. His plan to take the money outside is thwarted when the door is locked. When he hears Mary Jane’s footsteps, he quickly slips the bag of gold under the coffin lid and disappears.
5. The king and duke promise to take the Wilks girls home to England to live with them. The king is in a hurry to get back because his congregation needs him back in the pulpit.
6. The two sons were sold up the river to Memphis and their mother was sold down the river to New Orleans.
7. The king meets a slaveholder and makes a quick sale. The duke feels that it was “quick sales and small profits.” He is proven right when they later assume that the slaves took their six thousand dollars with them.
8. The duke admires the con game that he thinks they have played when they pretended to be sorry to leave but took the money with them. He feels he could have made a fortune with their acting talents.
9. The girls’ hearts are broken to see them sold away from the town and separated from their families.
10. Huck comes close to telling on the king and the duke when he sees the reaction of the girls, but he knows they will soon be back since the sales are illegal.
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