“Come in any time. Always welcome,” says Mr. Wade.
We went out and down-stairs. Catty was sort of smiling to himself. “There,” says he. “I guess Mr. Bockers ’ll help us some, even if he does hurt us some.”
“I never ’u’d ’a’ thought of that scheme in the world,” says I.
“’Twasn’t much to think of,” says Catty. And that was just like him. He never was stuck up about the things he did, and it never tickled him to do something especial clever. He was all for business and manners and being respectable. If he could get what he wanted easy, why, he took it easy. If he had to use a lot of brains, why, he just went to work and used them. It didn’t seem to make a mite of difference to him. He was satisfied either way.
CHAPTER X
On the first of the month Catty and his father moved into the little store; all the profits they made out of the warehouse-painting job went into furniture and stock for the store, and there wasn’t much stock. Mr. Atkins didn’t seem like he was very interested, and sighed a lot and held his head, and Catty had to watch him sharp to keep him from just hiking off into the country and lying down somewheres for a day at a time. But every time Catty saw his father make a move he was right at his heels.
“You can be shiftless evenin’s, Dad,” he said, “but daytimes you got to be a business man. It’s jest startin’ in that’s hard. First you know you’ll get int’rested, and then nobody could drive you off.”
“Don’t want to git int’rested,” said Mr. Atkins, sorry-like. “What I want is what we always done—jest nothin’ in special.”
“You ought to like it,” says Catty, “and so you got to like it. Take you and me as we be, and we hain’t worth a basket of shucks. We don’t amount to nothin’. Nor we wouldn’t never amount to nothin’ if we went on like we was goin’.... That reminds me—I got to begin makin’ you take lessons in table manners. I’m takin’ ’em off of Wee-wee. Not that Wee-wee has got any manners to spare,” says he, “but he’s got more ’n me. As soon as I’ve learned all he knows, I’m goin’ to somebody else—maybe his mother.”
I told Dad about that and he laughed fit to split. “You tell Catty to come right along any time he needs a dose of manners you can’t give him,” says he.