“Got the book?”
“Yes.”
“Wonder if you’d loan her to me so’s I could be readin’ it nights?”
“You bet,” says I.
“I wisht there was some way of learnin’ them other things, so I could start in school where I ought to be. But ’tain’t much use wishin’. I ought to learn things easier ’n a little kid six or seven year old, and I ought to ketch up before long, but I’ll have to start in at the beginnin’, I expect.”
“Say,” says I, “I got all the books. And my Dad knows everythin’. Why don’t you borrow them books and ask Dad if he won’t kind of teach you at odd times? Bet you’d learn quicker ’n greased lightnin’, with him to show you.”
“Calc’late he’d be willin’?”
“Who? Dad? Ho! Be tickled to death. I’ll ask him this noon.”
“Much obleeged,” says Catty, “and while he’s teachin’ me he kin give me an idee about manners.. I got to be as full of manners as anybody, and fuller, ’cause folks won’t expect it of me, and I got to prove to ’em that I’m jest as good as they be and know as much about how to eat and them kind of things.... Now them ladders.”
We walked along a spell and then Catty stopped all of a sudden.