Catty said all this as sober as a judge. He wasn’t poking fun at his father nor being impudent. He was just saying what was so in the best way he knew how.
All of a sudden Mr. Atkins spoke up.
“Wee-wee,” says he, “what’s your notions about medicine-shows?”
“Medicine-shows?” says I. “What about ’em?”
“Regard ’em as proper and respectable?” says he.
“They’re lots of fun,” says I, “especially when they pull folks’s teeth free and have real Injuns doin’ war-dances and things.”
“You like ’em, then?”
“Sure,” says I.
“But s’posin’ the feller sells medicine for a dollar a bottle that he guarantees to cure up rheumatics and cramps in the stummick and chills and warts and corns and freckles and backache and earache—and supposin’ that medicine hain’t worth the speck on a toad’s ear to cure anythin’? How about that?”
“Did the doctor know it?” says I.