Chapter 12-20 question

Tom gives his medicine to the cat and alarms Aunt Polly. He then points out that he only treated the cat the way she treated him.

‘Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?’

‘I done it out of pity for him — because he hadn’t any aunt.’

‘Hadn’t any aunt! — you numskull. What has that got to do with it?’

‘Heaps. Because if he’d had one she’d a burnt him out herself! She’d a roasted his bowels out of him ‘thout any more feeling than if he was a human!’

Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in a new light; what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy, too. She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she put her hand on Tom’s head and said gently:  ‘I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good.

Tom gave the medicine to the cat