Every day on Daily Readers' Book Club we offer an article length section of a book until that book is done.  We are currently reading Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  This book will have 90 parts.

Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now.  Glory
was sufficient.  He would live for glory.  Now that he was distinguished,
maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her--she should see
that he could be as indifferent as some other people.  Presently she
arrived.  Tom pretended not to see her.  He moved away and joined a group
of boys and girls and began to talk.  Soon he observed that she was
tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes,
pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter
when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her
captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye
in his direction at such times, too.  It gratified all the vicious
vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set
him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that
he knew she was about.  Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved
irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and
wistfully toward Tom.  Then she observed that now Tom was talking more
particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else.  She felt a sharp
pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once.  She tried to go away, but
her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead.  She
said to a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity:

"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?"

"I did come--didn't you see me?"

"Why, no!  Did you?  Where did you sit?"

"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go.  I saw YOU."

"Did you?  Why, it's funny I didn't see you.  I wanted to tell you about
the picnic."

"Oh, that's jolly.  Who's going to give it?"

"My ma's going to let me have one."

"Oh, goody; I hope she'll let ME come."

"Well, she will.  The picnic's for me.  She'll let anybody come that I
want, and I want you."

"That's ever so nice.  When is it going to be?"

"By and by.  Maybe about vacation."

"Oh, won't it be fun!  You going to have all the girls and boys?"

"Yes, every one that's friends to me--or wants to be"; and she glanced
ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence
about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the
great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within
three feet of it."

"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller.

"Yes."

"And me?" said Sally Rogers.

"Yes."

"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?"

"Yes."

And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged
for invitations but Tom and Amy.  Then Tom turned coolly away, still
talking, and took Amy with him.  Becky's lips trembled and the tears
came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on
chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of
everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and
had what her sex call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded
pride, till the bell rang.  She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast
in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what
SHE'D do.

At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant
self-satisfaction.  And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate
her with the performance.  At last he spied her, but there was a sudden
falling of his mercury.  She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind
the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so
absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book,
that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides.
Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins.  He began to hate himself for
throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation.  He
called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of.  He
wanted to cry with vexation.  Amy chatted happily along, as they walked,
for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function.  He
did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he
could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as
otherwise.  He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and
again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there.  He could
not help it.  And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that
Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the
living.  But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her
fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is available from amazon.com.