“’Cause I won’t let him,” says he. “I’m goin’ to make it. Got to. Be more fun.”
“Fun!” says Mr. Atkins. “D’you call workin’ and makin’ money fun? Strange idee of fun. Fun’s somethin’ you laugh at and enjoy. Who ever heard of anybody laughin’ at work?”
“And we can’t live here,” says Catty.
“Why?” says Mr. Atkins.
“’Tain’t respectable. Houses without no winders into ’em hain’t respectable, and folks looks up to furniture and carpets.”
“Ho!” says Mr. Atkins. “Hain’t slept in a bed in ten year. Don’t believe I could do it.”
“It’s easy,” says I. “I do it every night.”
“All in bein’ used to it,” says he.
In spite of Mr. Atkins’s bein’ so lazy and shiftless, I took a liking to him. Somehow it didn’t seem like laziness, but like something different altogether. He was so simple and kind of gentle and his eyes was kind. You almost got the idea that he didn’t know about things, especial’ about how to work, and that it wasn’t his fault at all.
“Didn’t you ever work?” says I, because I was curious about it.