“Live in that old shanty by the bayou?”
“Don’t live there. Jest sort of campin there, fishin’ in the bayou. Campin’-like. Any crime to campin’?”
“Town marshal says you got no visible means of support.”
“How’s he know?” says Mr. Atkins. “That feller don’t know but what I got a million dollars in gov’ment bonds and go around clippin’ off a coupon whenever I need one.”
“Have you a business?”
“Painter ’n’ decorator.”
“Where’s your place of business?”
Here Catty walked up to his father and handed him a piece of paper and whispered in his ear. Mr. Atkins read over the paper and says: “Jest rented a store. Calc’latin’ to move in right sudden. Goin’ to live there, too. Rooms behind the store. Calc’late to do paintin’ and decoratin’ and gen’al contractin’. Rented this store off a feller named Gage. Here’s a paper that says it with his name hitched onto the bottom.”
I guess Mr. Gage hadn’t figured that Mr. Atkins was the one that had rented his store. He hadn’t ever seen him, of course, for Catty and me had rented it. When he saw that paper it kind of knocked him off his perch. “Be you the man that’s rented my store?”
“Calc’late to be.”