“Landed the job,” says he. “Five-hundred-dollar contract. We kin work it in with what we got to do, easy.”
“Fine,” says Jack, but Catty he didn’t say a word. He just looked at his Dad in a way that made me feel kind of messy in the throat, because it was a glad kind of a look, and a proud kind of a look, and a hopeful kind of a look all rolled into one. Then, in a minute, he says, “Dad, it looks like we were goin’ to make a go of it, don’t it?”
“Sonny, I’m kind of ashamed to own it up, but dummed if I hain’t kind of gittin’ attached to work. Don’t seem right nor possible, but you kin sell me for a cent if I hain’t kind of enjoyin’ myself—all but the decorum book. Looks like that was a sort of a pest.”
“It won’t be when you git it learned by heart,” says Catty.
“I contend,” says Mr. Atkins, “that pie wasn’t never made to eat with a fork. No, sir; it’s shaped and built on purpose to slide a knife under. There’s things, and I admit it, that can be speared with a fork, but when it comes to pie and mashed pertaters, why, book or no book, the best and easiest way to eat ’em is with a knife.”
“But ’tain’t manners, Dad.”
“How if some feller come along and made it up that it wasn’t manners to use a putty-knife when you’re handlin’ putty, but that it was polite to put it on with a feather. How much work d’you calc’late a feller’d git done? No, sirree! it’s the tool that works best a feller ought to use, and no one that somebody says is the pertiest.”
“But you got to use a fork, Dad.”
“I’ll use her, all right, seein’ as you’re set on it, but I warn you, Catty, if ever you try to git your Dad to give up usin’ a putty-kjnife for puttyin’ then you and me is goin’ to have an argument.”
All at once he caught sight of the churn and went over to it and turned the crank and fussed around with it. “This here,” says he, “is a ree-markable handy contraption. Got up right,” he says. “Churn, hain’t it?”