“Hair-cuttin’ barber’s?”
“That’s the feller, Dad.”
“I’m goin’ to git my hair cut?”
“Whiskers, too.”
“Not clean off?” says Mr. Atkins, and his eyes got kind of frightened.
“Naw,” says Catty, “not off. Them whiskers is valuable, pervidin’ they’re used right. I’ve been thinkin’ up what kind of whiskers looks most respectable and dignified and sich-like, and I got it all planned out. Let’s hustle, Dad.”
So we went to the barber’s, and Catty herded his Dad into the chair, and then told the barber just what he wanted done and how he wanted it. He had a picture he had cut out of an old magazine of some man that was president of a railroad, and he was about the most dignified-looking man I ever see. His whiskers come down to a sharp point and was that neat and handsome you wouldn’t believe it. Catty held this picture up to the barber and told him to make his Dad look as much like that as he could.
The barber he went to work slow and careful. Every little while he would stand off and look at Mr. Atkins with his head on one side and whistle through his teeth. Then he would sort of rush in and snip off a chunk of hair and then stand off again and take another look. Mr. Atkins sat like he was frozen solid and looked at the barber hard and then looked in the glass, and then grunted down in his throat. It took the barber ’most an hour to git through, but when he was done you wouldn’t have known Mr. Atkins. He looked like he was ten years younger and a million dollars richer. Why, if a man with whiskers like his were fixed should stop you on the street and ask you to get him change for a million-dollar bill, you would be surprised that he was bothering with such small change.
Mr. Atkins looked at himself and waggled his head; then he looked at himself some more, sideways, hideways, and wideways, and mumbled and looked discontented.
“’Tain’t me,” says he. “Now, when I git up in the mornin’ and wash my face and look in the glass I’ll have to git interduced or I’ll think there’s a stranger a-hangin’ around. I got used to my face and I kind of liked it. Now I got to start in all over to git used to this one.”