“But you eat with your knife,” says I.
“’Twouldn’t cut nobody’s mouth but mine,” says he.
“Respectable folks don’t do it. Eatin’ with your knife is the worst thing a feller kin do.”
“Worse’n stealin’?”
“I wouldn’t go so far’s to say that.”
“Bet Mrs. Gage would think it was,” says Catty. “She’s one of them kind of folks that don’t see nothin’ but the trimmin’s. If Dad and me had drove into town behind a team of milk-white horses, and each of us wearin’ stovepipe hats, and a bushel of dollar bills scattered on the floor of the buggy, she’d ’a’ invited us to dinner, and wouldn’t have cared how much her boy played with me. Not even if we stole them dollar bills.”
“I dunno,” says I.
“I do,” says he. “The way I see it there’s jest good folks and bad folks. If you’re good you’re good, no matter if you’re respectable or not, nor if you eat with a shingle instead of a fork; and you’re bad if you’re bad, and no amount of eatin’ with the right kind of tools nor wearin’ silk hats kin make you good.”
“That’s right,” says I.
“Well, then?”