- "Tom!" That's how it begins.
- Old Aunt Polly is looking for her rascal of a nephew, Tom Sawyer, but he can't be found.
- She looks inside and out before finding in snooping around in the closet. He's caught red-handed and, uh, red-mouthed. He's been stealing jam from the pantry.
- Tom, ever the clever one, pulls the old "Look out behind you!" trick and it works.
- He hops over a fence while Aunt Polly curses herself for falling for such a stupid ploy.
- After playing hooky all day, Tom helps Jim, a young slave, chop wood. Well, Tom mostly talks about his adventures, while his annoying, well-mannered half-brother Sid does his chores. The Jim mentioned here is not, it should be noted, the same Jim that appears in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- Over dinner, Aunt Polly interrogates Tom – she has a feeling he didn't go to school – but he manages to evade all her questions while also stealing sugar from the sugar bowl.
- Sid tattles on Tom, but not before Tom can make his way out the door.
- He leaves the house, whistling away his troubles, until he happens on a well-dressed boy – a "too well-dressed" boy in the street.
- The two stare each other down, Old West style before they start arguing about who could lick who and who's a liar and my brother can beat up your brother and all that stuff. Then they finally put their money where their mouths are and start fighting.
- Tom comes out on top, but ends up chasing the boy home after the sore loser hits him with a stone while his back is turned.
- Tom attempts to sneak through a window, but he's ambushed by Aunt Polly, who decides that he will definitely not be having fun the next day, Saturday.