“No, thankee,” says Catty. “I got to do this myself—jest to show wimmin like her”—and he pointed over at Gage’s house—“that they hain’t got no business talkin’ about me like she did. I got to show ’em all, and I’m a-goin’ to.”
“Good for you, Catty. Go at it.... Good-by.”
“G’-by,” says Catty, and we moved off toward the bayou where his Dad was fishing.
We found Mr. Atkins sitting on an old log about nine-tenths asleep and the other tenth drowsy. Catty tickled his ear with a straw, and after he had batted at it a couple of times with his hand he woke up and turned around.
“Pesterin’ your ol’ Dad, eh? Crept up jest to pester me when I was a-sittin’ and thinkin’ and reasonin’ out how to ketch a big fish. One of these here times, young feller, I’m a-goin’ to ketch you jest when you start to pester me, and pieces of you ’ll come rainin’ down more ’n six mile away.”
What he said was awful ferocious, but the way he said it wasn’t ferocious a mite. “Go ’way,” says he, “and pester somebody else.”
“Dad,” says Catty, “you used to be a painter, didn’t you?”
“Who? Me?... Say, young feller, since I quit there hain’t been no real painters ’cause there hain’t nobody to teach ’em. Paint! Now I come to think back there never was sich a painter as me, not for speed nor for skill nor for nothin’. One time I call to mind a man and his wife that wanted their house painted. He wanted it red and she was sot on blue. They called me in and give me the job of satisfyin’ both of ’em, and I done it. Nobody else could ’a’ managed it.”
“How’d you do it?” I asked, because it looked like a puzzler to me.
“Painted it blue,” says he.