“But that only satisfied the woman. Didn’t her husband complain?”

“Nary. Come to find out he was colorblind. Jest let on to him that I was paintin’ it bright red, and he never knowed the difference. Don’t to this day. Figgers he’s got a red house when ’tain’t no more red than a blue jay. That’s the kind of a painter I was.”

“Do you remember how, Dad? Could you paint now if you was of a mind to?”

“Could I paint now? Ho! Why, if folks was to see me paint once all the other painters ’u’d be out of a job. I kin shut both my eyes and tie my right hand and outpaint any other man in the U-nited States of America, with Canady throwed in. I kin paint more in a day than any other feller kin in four, and do it better and more artistic.”

“That’s fine,” says Catty, with a kind of a funny look around his eyes, “because you’re goin’ to start in Monday.”

“Start in what?”

“Paintin’.”

“Paintin’ what?”

“Big warehouse.”

“You mean me—your own Dad that raised you?”