“Did you ever figger any on settlin’ in one place, Dad?”
“Can’t say’s I have. There’s things ag’in’ it. When you’re settled you hain’t on the move, be you? Nobody could claim you was, I guess. And, take the opposite, when you’re always on the move you hain’t settled in one place.” He sat back and eyed us like he was mighty proud of figuring a thing out that way.
“Do you like movin’ so much, Dad, that you couldn’t be contented to settle?”
“Movin’ about’s an occupation, Sonny—a reg’lar profession like law or storekeepin’. There’s got to be folks in all trades, or business would go smash! Every feller ought to do what he kin do best, and the best thing I ever done was bein’ shiftless and moggin’ from place to place. Seems like I’m fitted for it by nature. Yes, sir, I was cut out for it. I hain’t never seen anybody that does it as thorough and conscientious as me. Now, as to settlin’ down, I hain’t had the experience, and how’s a man goin’ to succeed at a trade he hain’t had experience in?”
“If I was to ask you to settle here, and say that I wanted to do it mighty bad, and that I didn’t want to move around any more, what would you say?”
“I calc’late I’d ask you what the reason was.”
“I hain’t sure I want to, but if I did want to there would be reasons.”
“There gen’ally is reason for ’most everything a feller wants. I’ve noticed it. I’ve noticed it most special and p’tic’lar. Take a dog, for instance. He wants to chase his tail. Why does he want to chase his tail? Because he’s got reasons for it, and them reasons is that he wants to satisfy a curiosity in his mind whether he kin catch it. If you had reasons for wantin’ to stop here permanent, what would them reasons be?”
“They’d be,” says Catty, slow and deliberate, “that Mrs. Gage up and called me names, and that I wouldn’t want to run away without showin’ her that she didn’t have no business callin’ me names. And they’d be that I’d want to learn myself table manners so’s I wouldn’t be scairt if I ever et with Wee-wee’s mother ag’in. But mostly they’d be that folks seems to think that shiftlessness hain’t respectable, and that it gits under my skin to have folks sneerin’ at you and me.”
“Folks sneers, do they?”