“More beautiful-lookin’ out of a train window,” says I, “than it is from behind a plow.” He laughed a little and tossed me a dime. I don’t know why, ’cause I hadn’t done anything to earn it. I looked at it and then at him and says, “What’s this for?”
“Candy,” says he, and right there I started in not to like him very well. I don’t know just why, but there was something about him and the way he tossed it to me that r’iled me up.
He turned and walked off to the bus. For half a minute I was going to throw his dime after him, but I didn’t. A dime is a dime, and, no matter how you dislike the fellow it comes from, it ’ll buy just as much, so I stuck it in my pocket and looked after him. He certainly was gaudy.
He wore one of them long coats that flaps around your legs, and his pants was a different color, with stripes into them, and his vest was white, with a pound of watch-chain strung across the front of it—and he had on a stovepipe hat. He wore shiny shoes with cloth things covering the tops of them. At first I thought his socks were coming down, but I found out they were things folks call spats. There was a sparkly stone in his tie that I guessed was a diamond.
I turned to Catty. “There,” says I. “You want your Dad to look respectable. I’ll bet you can’t beat that critter.”
“He’s consid’able dressed up,” says Catty, without a smile.
“Bet he’s rich,” says I.
“Bet he wants folks to think he is, anyhow,” says Catty.
“What d’you mean?” says I.
“I dunno,” says Catty, “but that feller hain’t my idee of the way a reg’lar rich business man looks.... Ever go fishin’ and fix a worm on a hook so’s it looks all-fired splendid—fat and twisty and better ’n any worm ever looked if it was left to itself?”