“Won’t never come natural not to eat pie with a knife. There’s two ways to eat pie. One is to pick a hunk up in your hand and chaw it down. T’other is to slice it with your knife and feed it in with the blade. That’s how pie was intended to be ate.”
“Shucks!” says Catty, and then he stopped and waggled his finger. “There you go layin’ your tools down onto the table. Hain’t I told you always to put your knife and fork onto your plate when you hain’t usin’ ’em? Onto your plate.... And look at your spoon! Stickin’ up out of your coffee-cup. Jerk it out quick and lay it in the sasser.”
Mr. Atkins was like to cry, I thought, but he did like he was told. “Bein’ respectable,” says he, “is about the uncomfortablest way of livin’ on earth. I’d rather I was a wild Injun eatin’ raw meat,” says he.
“You hain’t no Injun, Dad. You’re a business man, and livin’ respectable. And more ’n that, you’re goin’ to keep on that way till every man and woman and baby in this town will point to you and say, ‘There goes Mr. Atkins, the respectablest man that ever lived.’”
“It’s an awful prospect,” says Mr. Atkins, that gloomy you would have thought he was just going to be taken out and drownded. “I don’t calc’late ever to be happy again.”
“Wait,” says Catty, “till we kin afford to git you them dress-up clothes....”
“Sufferin’ mugwumps!” Mr. Atkins says from the bottom of his heart.
“Here,” Catty says, “what you a-doin’, Dad? Look at your napkin. Stuck in your collar like you was goin’ to shave....”
“Doggone!” says Mr. Atkins, and after that he didn’t say a word during the meal.