“We got to.”
So they argued about it some more, and both of them was sniveling some, but the upshot of it was that they started out pretty slow and taking back streets when they could. But the town was crowded with folks and strangers, and before they was half-way to the tent in the square they had about forty kids tagging after them, hollering and yelling, and when they went into the tent the whole audience turned to look, and then let out a holler of laughing. They started right up the center aisle. I guess they was so flabbergasted by that time that they didn’t know what they was doing.... And then Mrs. Gage and Mrs. Gordon caught on to who it was that was making the disturbance, and both of them women busted out of their seats with fire in their eyes and swooped down on Banty and Skoodles like a couple of excited cyclones, and each of them grabbed a kid by the ear and jest naturally lifted him up in the air and carried him out. I took particular notice of their ears after that—Banty’s and Skoodles’s—and the ones their mothers grabbed that day was all of half an inch longer than the others forever after....
Catty and me was suspicioned about that, I guess, but nobody had any regular evidence, and my father didn’t ask any questions. That was like Dad. He didn’t want to have to lick me for that, because he knew what Banty and Skoodles had been doing to Catty, but if he knew we did it, why, he’d have to. Fathers are like that. They have to lick you whether they want to or not—if you really get caught at something, but they can know you did it, and sort of approve and hope you won’t get caught. We didn’t, and we wouldn’t have cared a lot, anyhow. I’d have been willing to take a licking any day to do it again.
Skoodles and Banty knew who did it, all right, but they didn’t have anything to say, either, and they didn’t show up much in public for a long time, because every time they did every kid in town would tag after them and ask them questions about those clothes and say things they thought was funny. It taught them a good lesson, that it wasn’t safe to monkey with Catty—and the rest of the kids in town got the same idea. I never heard a kid say “Tramp” to Catty after that, and some of the kids, whose folks weren’t too particular, even offered to play with us. But we wouldn’t have anything to do with any of them.
“Jest wait,” says Catty. “The time’s comin’ when Dad and me ’ll be as good as any of ’em. Then we’ll see. I’ll pick who I want to go around with, you can bet.”
“You hain’t goin’ to be one of them ’risto-crats, be you?”
“No,” says he, “I sha’n’t be stuck up, but I’ll be self-respectin’. You wait till Dad goes to church in a silk hat.”
“He won’t—never,” says I. “He’ll run away first.”
“You jest watch,” says he. “Dad’s improvin’ every day.”
And that was true. Honest, you wouldn’t have known Mr. Atkins was the same man I saw first sitting on a log down by the bayou. He was neat looking and kept his hair and beard trimmed, and there was a different look in his face, and even his walk was different. He used to sort of slouch along, but now he had a sort of a snap to his step, and if you didn’t know him you would think he was a regular, respectable man of business instead of a tramp that wasn’t more than half reformed.