“It ’ll be painful,” says Mr. Atkins, “but I guess I kin put up with it if you’re so set on it.”
“Now,” says Catty, “let’s talk about the job I got figgered out for you—the churn job.”
“Eh? Got any manners in it? Nothin’ where I got to wear a plug-hat, is it?”
“You’ll have to look the best you kin,” says Catty, “and talk the best you kin.”
Mr. Atkins groaned, but I guess he was sort of joking about it. “Let’s have the worst,” says he.
“You got to upset Kinderhook’s applecart,” says Catty.
“Me? How? Why?”
“First reason,” says Catty, “is that I want you should git all the credit for savin’ the folks’ money. There hain’t nothin’ will make folks think so much of a feller as to have him save some money for them. You’ll be helpin’ the folks here to hang on to a awful lot of it, and the more there is the more they’re bound to be obliged to you. After you’ve done it they jest can’t say you hain’t respectable, nor refuse to give you jobs, nor look down on you. That’s the big reason. The next reason is that a man’s got to do it because nobody would pay any attention to us kids.”
“He’s right, Atkins,” says Jack. “The first reason is enough, but I’m here to say that it took a pretty big kid to give up the glory of doing it himself. Catty, I’m right proud to know you.”
“Well,” says Mr. Atkins, kind of resigned, like a man that’s just been told he’s going to be operated on for his appendix, “if I got to, why, I got to. What ’ll I do and how ’ll I do it?”