“The man that’s got the contract to paint Manning’s warehouse?”
“Calc’late to be.”
“The man that’s holdin’ this here paintin’-race Monday?”
“Calc’late to be.”
Mr. Gage scratched his head and looked worried. He shot a glance at his wife and she was scowling to beat everything. But there wasn’t anything for him to do. He swallowed once or twice and says: “Case dismissed. Man that’s in business and rented a store and has got a big contract hain’t no vagrant. Court’s adjourned.”
Mrs. Gage got up quick and hustled out of the room, but everybody else stayed, and everybody seemed like he wanted to shake hands with Mr. Atkins and talk to him, and before we knew it the court had turned into a sort of meeting to make arrangements to celebrate the painting-race.
They began making plans. First off there was to be a parade with the Silver Cornet Band, and a speech by Representative Capper, who was home from the state capital. There was going to be committees, and the G. A. R. was going to march and the Republican Club and the Knights of Hannibal, and everything. Then the chief of the fire department says they would march and pull their new hose-cart and hook-and-ladder that had never been tried out yet. I saw Catty whispering to a man next to him, and the man got up all of a sudden and says:
“Feller-citizens, this here is a great day for our town. There hain’t never been no paintin’-race nowheres in the world before, and we ought to make it a reg’lar town event. It ought to be did right. Now there’s the matter of ladders. Painters’ ladders is mostly white and all daubed with paint. How’s it goin’ to look to have this kind of a celebration and nothin’ but mussy ladders? Folks’ll be disgusted. What I say is, do it right or don’t do it at all. Red ladders is what is needed. Ladders that look like a celebration and that folks can see.... Yes, sir. Now to do this here thing right, Mr. Atkins and Patt and Jones ought to be drawed to the scene of the contest on the village’s hook-and-ladder wagon, and the firemen, wearin’ their red shirts, ought to take there own red ladders and hist them alongside the buildin’, and the race ought to be raced by men paintin’ on them very identical ladders.... That’s my idea. Give the whole thing a kind of a official sort of a look, that’s what it ’ll do, and I move, Mr. Chairman, that it be did.”
Well, sir! Everybody let out a holler, and the motion was seconded and voted on—and Catty Atkins had his ladders! He turned around to me and grinned and says: “Figgered it would come out right.... Looks like we was movin’ along toward bein’ respectable. What become of Mrs. Gage?”
“She left early,” says I.