In chapter 12, Tom is depressed about Becky's unexplained absence from school, which his Aunt sees as an illness that needs to be treated. Always a fan of the latest health fads, she decides that Tom needs the "bath treatment," which involves dousing the boy with cold water and scrubbing him raw with a towel, or wrapping him in wet sheets and covering him with blankets so he can "sweat out" the sickness. Tom endures this treatment and remains as listless as ever. It seems to have no effect, which drives his Aunt to use the "Pain Killer," a kind of tonic that was "fire in a liquid form." Tom's listlessness immediately ends: "The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.” Tom decides that he needs to take steps to end his Aunt's "care," so he concocts a plan that culminates in his feeding a dose of the Pain Killer to the cat, which sends the cat into convulsions. When his Aunt finds out what he has done, she realizes that her "care" perhaps has been too rigorous, even though she persists in thinking that it did Tom good.
Tom Sawyer may love nothing better than to skip school to go for a nice swim on a hot day, but that doesn't mean that he likes taking a bath. In fact, he hates it with a passion. Bath time is most definitely Tom's least favorite time of the week, and he'll do anything he can to get out of it. But on this particular occasion, he doesn't succeed.
Tom needs to look nice and clean for when he goes to Sunday school, so his cousin Mary proceeds to give him a good, hard scrubbing. After Mary's done with him, Tom looks like a new boy; all that accumulated filth has been successfully removed. The effect of the bath on Tom is truly transformative. A nice hot bath has made him look so remarkably decent, so much so that without all that dirt, he can now take his place among respectable people "without distinction of color"—the color, that is, of dirt.
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