“Fiddlesticks!” says I, for it didn’t look to me like there was any sense to what he was saying. I liked him at first and I kept on liking him, that was all, and I didn’t give a tinker’s hoot who else liked him or hated him.
“Wee-wee,” says he, “I wisht I could go to dancin’-school.”
“Why?” says I.
“I read in a book that you can learn how to carry yourself, and how to be mannerly and not clumsy better in a dancin’-school than anywhere else.”
“If that’s so,” says I, “I calc’late on goin’ clumsy most of my life. Kin you see me dancin’?” says I. “I’d look perty, wouldn’t I? Dancin’!... Whoo!”
“I’d do anythin’,” says he, in that set voice of his, “to make me and Dad more presentable.”
And I guess he would, too.
CHAPTER XX
During the next week Catty got more than twenty churn catalogues, and the way we studied them you would have thought we were trying to pass some kind of an examination. Every spare minute we got we read about churns and looked at pictures of the insides of churns and compared churns to see how they were alike and how they were different. It’s funny how easy it is to study something you don’t have to. We could have learned a grammar by heart with the work we put on churns—but that would have been work. It’s too bad the school can’t make a fellow enjoy studying like we did. If the school would only give a fellow a definite object for studying everything I’d learn twice as much three times as easy.
But I guess we got to be about the greatest experts in the world on churns. We knew them inside and out and up and down and sideways and wideways. We got so we could take a section of a churn and cover up the name of it, and we could tell just what it was and what churn it came out of—as easy as pie. Catty was better at it than I was. I’ll bet you could blindfold him and stick the plunger or the handle of a churn under his nose, and he could tell what it was just by the smell. It came in mighty handy, too, you can bet.