“There,” says he, “that’s done. Now I hain’t got anything to do but git together the ladders and brushes and paints and workmen to do the job.”
It looked to me like that was quite a chore, but Catty didn’t seem discouraged any. “We got to git busy,” says he.
CHAPTER V
Catty had the rest of Thursday and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to get together the things he had to have to paint Mr. Manning’s warehouse—and to convince his father he had to go to work. That last looked to me to be about as difficult as the other was. Mr. Atkins didn’t look like work. I never saw a man who looked less like it in my life. But then I looked at Catty, and his jaw was all squared up and there was a kind of a spark in his eye. Right then I made up my mind that Mr. Atkins was in for a time of it.
All of a sudden Catty started to talk.
“There’s lots of things folks thinks is necessary that I don’t see any use in. There’s being well off, for instance. What’s the use? Nobody ever had a better time ’n Dad and me has had. There’s them tall silk hats. Some day Dad’s got to wear one, though I’ll bet it ’ll be a job to git it on his head. He’d shy off a hat like that jest the same way a horse shies away from an elephant. Then there’s this thing of being respectable.”
“But you got to be respectable,” says I.
“Why? All I can see to bein’ respectable is workin’ and gittin’ tired out and bein’ tied down to one place instead of bein’ shiftless and moseyin’ along wherever you want to, and enjoyin’ yourself. I can’t see why folks set so much store by makin’ themselves miserable.”
“There’s more ’n that to bein’ respectable,” says I. “There’s bein’ honest and havin’ manners and—oh, a heap of things.”
“We always calc’lated to be honest,” says Catty. “As for manners, them we had was plenty for us. Dad he never complained of mine and I never complained of his’n. ’Twasn’t nobody else’s business that I kin see.”