“We haven’t any proof,” says Catty. “We know the folks are going to be cheated, but we can’t prove it, and if we were to make any talk about Mr. Kinderhook, the way everybody feels right now, and then couldn’t prove every word we said, they would tar and feather us and ride us on rails.”
“I guess that’s right,” says Mr. Wade. “But what are we to do?”
“I want you to fix things so that folks won’t pay in their money to Mr. Kinderhook. Fix it so they pay it to Captain Winton at the bank, and so that he’ll hang on to it till Mr. Kinderhook proves his churn will make butter.”
“You mean until Kinderhook gives a public demonstration of his churn?”
“That’s it, in nice long words,” says Catty. “That will make it sure he doesn’t get the money and sneak away, and he can’t very well refuse to—to demonstrate, can he? Don’t ask to see the insides of his churn, but just to have him set it up some place and pour cream into it and make butter. He can hide his churn in a box, or do anything with it, just so he proves to folks that it is his churn and that it is making butter. See?”
“He can’t refuse to do that, and I guess I can talk folks into insisting on it. But what then?”
“That’s up to Wee-wee and me,” says Catty. “We’ll ’tend to the rest. You do your part and we’ll do ours.”
We left, and Mr. Wade started over to see Captain Winton and some of the other business men of the town to suggest about the public demonstration of the churn. Our idea was to go down to the hotel to see what we could find out about the model of the churn that Mr. Kinderhook had. We figured he must have it with him, and our job was to find out where.
“I’m goin’ to write for all the churn catalogues I kin git,” says Catty. “I want to see what all the churns look like and how they work. It ’ll come in mighty handy.”
So I sat on the hotel porch and watched to see what Kinderhook would do while Catty went back and wrote for catalogues. He got back in an hour and we sat there, waiting and watching, but it was ’most noon before Kinderhook came down. I guess he was a late sleeper and we heard that he had his breakfast served up in his room. It was the first time anybody in our town had ever done such a thing as that, except when they were sick, and there was a lot of talk about it. Most of us had read how dukes and earls and suchlike had their breakfasts brought to them in bed, and how they ate it while some kind of a servant in knee-pants put on their clothes for them. A good many folks said it marked Kinderhook as being real aristocratic, but Catty and I wouldn’t agree any with that; at least, not till we knew he had a servant with tight pants to dress him while he ate his porridge. And how a man was going to eat while another fellow was pulling his shirt over his head I couldn’t make out. Catty couldn’t, either. He said a man was as apt to get a mouthful of shirt in such circumstances as he was a mouthful of porridge. Probably they learn how to do it. It must be funny to watch, though, and I’d pay money to see it.