“Well, then, we better git started,” says Mr. Atkins. “I kind of wish I had more good language to talk with, but what I got will have to do.”
“Right after this demonstration,” says Catty, “I’m a-goin’ to see that your language gits looked after. I’m a-goin’ to sick Jack Phillips onto you, and he’s got to teach you to talk like they do in college.”
Mr. Atkins made a face. “Life’s awful, hain’t it?... Well, Catty, so long’s you’ve started out to tinker with me, you might as well make a full job of it.”
“You kin bet I’m a-goin’ to,” says Catty, with that kind of a determined look around his mouth. “I’m goin’ to make you so respectable that the man that wrote the book ’ll be comin’ around to you for pointers.”
“I calc’late,” says Mr. Atkins to Jack, “that he means it. I hain’t never goin’ to have another peaceful, shiftless hour.”
“You bet you hain’t!” says Catty.
CHAPTER XXIII
The band was playing when we got there, and the crowds were packed about the grand-stand, and Kinderhook was sitting up there with his silk hat on and the red, white, and blue churn on a table draped with bunting.
“Looks just like he used to sellin’ patent medicine,” says Mr. Atkins.
Well, the band played quite a lot and then Kinderhook got up and made a speech about how much he liked our town and all of us, and how he aimed to live there always and wanted to see everybody comfortable and prosperous. He mentioned how he had intended to keep all the stock in his company, but how he had got to like us so well he was going to let go of a lot of it, and then the company would really be a town affair, owned by the citizens. He told us how prosperous it was going to make the town, and how the town was going to grow and all that sort of thing, and you could fairly see folks’ mouths water. Why, Kinderhook was that kind and convincing that I was almost ready to go home and bust open my iron savings-bank and go into the thing myself.