“Don’t he work?”
“I’ve seen him,” says Catty, “but it hain’t usual.”
“Are you rich?”
“Well—we got our health and these here clothes is mine, free and clear. No mortgages on ’em nor nothin’. Dad’s clothes is his’n, too, but they hain’t so gaudy as mine.”
“Kind of tramps?” says I, getting interested.
“Not tramps—j’st shiftless. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Where you sleepin’?”
“If you ain’t careful,” he says, as solemn as an owl, “you’ll ketch yourself askin’ a question. We been livin’,” says he, “in a little house down by the bayou.”
“That tumble-down shanty not far from the waterworks?”
“That’s the one.”