“What?”
“Made up his mind to hitch up to this town.”
“Good!” says I. “He told us last night.”
“Dad don’t like it much,” said Catty, “but it ’ll be good for him. I’ve thought it out.”
Now wasn’t that a funny way for a boy to talk—about something being good for his Dad? You would have thought Catty was the Dad and his father was the boy.
“Yes,” says Catty, “it won’t be so much fun, maybe, and maybe it ’ll be more. I think Dad ’ll grow to like it, and he might even grow to like workin’ reg’lar. I hain’t expectin’ that, ’cause he’s been shiftless so many years, but maybe.”
“Work,” says Mr. Atkins, sadlike.
“Lots of folks does it constant,” says Catty.
“They have to,” says his father.
“You’ll have to now—some. Mind, I don’t expect you to work every day and all day long. You kin sort of git the habit by degrees. But if you don’t work some we’ll never git the respect of these here folks. I’ve been studyin’ it over, and seems like a body’s got to work to git folks’s respect. Don’t matter how good you be nor how happy you be, nor that you hain’t never done nobody any harm. You got to work. Seems kind of funny to me. If you jest work you git some respect. If you work a lot and make a little money you git more respect. But the feller that gits most respect is the one that works at makin’ other folks work for him. I’m goin’ to be that kind.”