“Meanin’ me?” says his father, as doleful as a tombstone.
“Have to start with you, I calc’late. Hain’t figgered out what to do first, exceptin’ that it ’ll have to be somethin’ to git me some money. ’Course I could start out runnin’ errants or cuttin’ grass, or even workin’ in a store, but there hain’t nothin’ in that. What I got to do is to figger out a business that’s mine and that I kin run, and where I can hire some other kid instead of somebody hirin’ me. That’s the way to git ahead.”
“But you’ll have to work for somebody to make some money to start,” says I.
“I dunno,” says he. “I’m huntin’ for a scheme—and then I’m studyin’ out what kind of a business I want to git into.”
“Hain’t it miserable?” says Mr. Atkins. “Here we been goin’ along for years with nothin’ to bother us. Didn’t have to work and didn’t have to study about schemes. Now all of a sudden this here thing comes down on top of us. Don’t know where Catty gits sich notions from. Not from me. Must come off’n his mother’s side.”
“How much money you got to have?” I asked Catty.
“Dunno, ’cause I dunno what I want it for.”
“Maybe my Dad ’u’d lend it to you,” says I.
“He won’t,” says Catty, emphatic.
“Why?”