On the first of the month Catty and his father moved into the little
store; all the profits they made out of the warehouse-painting job went
into furniture and stock for the store, and there wasn’t much stock. Mr.
Atkins didn’t seem like he was very interested, and sighed a lot and
held his head, and Catty had to watch him sharp to keep him from just
hiking off into the country and lying down somewheres for a day at a
time. But every time Catty saw his father make a move he was right at
his heels.
“You can be shiftless evenin’s, Dad,” he said, “but daytimes you got to
be a business man. It’s jest startin’ in that’s hard. First you know
you’ll get int’rested, and then nobody could drive you off.”
“Don’t want to git int’rested,” said Mr. Atkins, sorry-like. “What I
want is what we always done—jest nothin’ in special.”
“You ought to like it,” says Catty, “and so you _got_ to like it. Take
you and me as we be, and we hain’t worth a basket of shucks. We don’t
amount to nothin’. Nor we wouldn’t never amount to nothin’ if we went on
like we was goin’.... That reminds me—I got to begin makin’ you take
lessons in table manners. I’m takin’ ’em off of Wee-wee. Not that
Wee-wee has got any manners to spare,” says he, “but he’s got more ’n
me. As soon as I’ve learned all he knows, I’m goin’ to somebody
else—maybe his mother.”
I told Dad about that and he laughed fit to split. “You tell Catty to
come right along any time he needs a dose of manners you can’t give
him,” says he.
You could see a difference in Catty already—the way he acted and the way
he walked, and sometimes the way he talked, but you couldn’t see any
difference in his father outside of having his whiskers trimmed and that
painter’s suit. He _looked_ pretty respectable, but down inside he was
just as shiftless as ever. He must have thought a lot of Catty to let
him do the way he did. If I was a man and wanted to be shiftless, you
bet I wouldn’t let any kid make me work the way Catty made him work. You
bet I wouldn’t.
Somehow, in spite of the women-folks, Catty managed to get a few little
jobs of painting and paperhanging—enough to keep his father busy. There
was lots of jobs he could have had if it hadn’t been for the women
talking against him, but he just went along and paid no attention. The
work he got was mostly from bachelors and widowers.
“Dunno what I’m a-goin’ to do when the single men is all painted up,”
says he.
“And when Jim Bockers opens his shop,” says I.
“He’s openin’ to-morrow,” says Catty. “Wisht I had money enough to start
my ice-cream stand. Wisht I had money enough to git a better stock of
wall-paper than Bockers ’ll have.”
“Wishin’ won’t git ’em,” says I.
“Wishin’ ’ll start to git ’em,” says he. “First you wish, and then you
dig out and git.... I’m goin’ to figger to git Dad a black suit and one
of them hard-boiled hats,” says he, “so’s he kin go to church Sundays.
Goin’ to church is respectable.”
“Be hard to make him take the only day he has to be shiftless with and
use it up goin’ to church,” says I.
“First he knows,” says Catty, “he won’t want to be shiftless any more.
I’ll bet if Dad ever started in to like business he’d be a good one.”
I think it was that very day that we first saw the Man Who Looked As If
He Was the Proprietor of the Earth.
Catty and I had gone down to the express-office to fetch some stock he
and his father had ordered from the city, and we happened to be there
just as the noon train came in. We planned it so we would be there just
when it came in. I don’t know why it is a fellow likes to see trains
pull in, but he does. It doesn’t matter a bit whether he’s expecting
somebody or not. Just to stand there and hear the train whistle around
the bend, and then to see the cowcatcher nose around the corner, and to
hear the noise of it coming, and then the rush and swish and grinding of
the brakes—is all great. It gets you excited and makes you feel _good_.
Catty and I stood watching her come in, and then we stayed to see who
got off. There was the usual supply of folks coming from the next town,
and old Mrs. Wiggins that had been to visit her daughter in the East,
and three drummers—and then The Proprietor. Catty was the one who said
he looked as if he was the Proprietor of the Earth, and after a while we
cut it down and just called him The Proprietor.
He came out of the smoking-car and stood on the platform, looking at the
station and the town like a man looks at something he has just bought
and isn’t sure he likes. He stood there a minute, and then he came down
the steps slow and dignified. I was the first person he spoke to in
town.
“My young friend,” says he, as polite as pie, “how does one get himself
and his luggage to your best hotel?”
“We-ell,” says I, kind of embarrassed, “most gits to the best hotel same
way they git to the worst. Hain’t but one,” says I.
“Indeed,” says he.
“Yes,” says I. “There’s two ways of gittin’ there. One is to walk and
carry your bag. T’other is to climb onto that there bus of Pazzy Bills’s
and ride for a quarter, hand-bags included, trunks a quarter extry.”
“Good,” says he. “I shall ride with Mr. Bills. You have a beautiful
town, young man. Already I am beginning to admire it.”
“It’s kind of hard to admire,” says I. “’Course there’s the standpipe up
on the hill. Highest in the country. And there’s Captain Winton’s house.
Outside of that, it’s jest a town full of folks.”
“Rich farming country,” says he. “Beautiful.”
“More beautiful-lookin’ out of a train window,” says I, “than it is from
behind a plow.” He laughed a little and tossed me a dime. I don’t know
why, ’cause I hadn’t done anything to earn it. I looked at it and then
at him and says, “What’s this for?”
“Candy,” says he, and right there I started in not to like him very
well. I don’t know just why, but there was something about him and the
way he tossed it to me that r’iled me up.
He turned and walked off to the bus. For half a minute I was going to
throw his dime after him, but I didn’t. A dime is a dime, and, no matter
how you dislike the fellow it comes from, it ’ll buy just as much, so I
stuck it in my pocket and looked after him. He certainly was gaudy.
He wore one of them long coats that flaps around your legs, and his
pants was a different color, with stripes into them, and his vest was
white, with a pound of watch-chain strung across the front of it—and he
had on a stovepipe hat. He wore shiny shoes with cloth things covering
the tops of them. At first I thought his socks were coming down, but I
found out they were things folks call spats. There was a sparkly stone
in his tie that I guessed was a diamond.
I turned to Catty. “There,” says I. “You want your Dad to look
respectable. I’ll bet you can’t beat that critter.”
“He’s consid’able dressed up,” says Catty, without a smile.
“Bet he’s rich,” says I.
“Bet he wants folks to _think_ he is, anyhow,” says Catty.
“What d’you mean?” says I.
“I dunno,” says Catty, “but that feller hain’t my idee of the way a
reg’lar rich business man looks.... Ever go fishin’ and fix a worm on a
hook so’s it looks all-fired splendid—fat and twisty and better ’n any
worm ever looked if it was left to itself?”
“Yes,” says I.
“To fool the fish,” says Catty. “Bait.... That’s the way The Proprietor
of the Earth there looks to me.”
“You’re talkin’ through your hat,” says I. “He looks jest like pictures
of bankers in story-books.”
“Hain’t read many story-books,” says he. “Let’s be moggin’ back,”
We walked back, though we could have rode on the seat with Pazzy Bills
if we had wanted to. Pazzy always lets the kids ride with him. On our
way we stopped at the hotel, being kind of curious about The Proprietor.
There was quite a few men on the hotel porch and in the office, talking
about the man that jest came, and looking at the register to find out
his name. His name was Arthur Peabody Kinderhook, of New York City.
The hotel clerk was looking kind of flabbergasted.
“Yes, sir,” he was saying. “That there man he walked right up to the
desk and he says, says he ‘Gimme your best suite with a bath.’
“‘Sweet’? says I.
“‘Suite,’ says he. ‘Bedroom, parlor, dressin’-room, bath.’
“‘You want the whole kaboodle of them rooms?’ says I. ‘All for
yourself?’
“‘I do,’ says he.
“‘I kin give ’em to you,’ says I, ‘but I hain’t never give nobody a bath
yet. You’ll have to take your own bath.’
“He kind of laughed at that and said he calc’lated to if I would supply
the bath-room.
“‘Bath-room,’ says I. ‘D’you mean one of them new-fangled affairs with a
tub a body kin lay down in, and with water squirtin’ hot and cold out of
nozzles?’
“‘Precisely,’ says he.
“‘Hain’t got none,’ says I. ‘But if you need a bath bad we kin set in a
washtub f’r you and one of the boys ’ll fetch you a kittle of hot
water.’
“He laughed again. ‘Wait, my friend,’ says he. ‘You’ll have bathtubs
before I’m through with you, and many other comforts and luxuries you
never dreamed of.’
“‘Do tell,’ says I. ‘Goin’ to stay long in our midst?’
“‘I am thinking,’ said he, ‘of establishing a large branch of my
principal industry here. I shall be with you for some time.’
“‘Livin’ in this hotel?’
“‘Yes,’ says he.
“‘In all them rooms?’ says I.
“‘Yes,’ says he.
“‘Cost you a dollar a day apiece,’ says I. ‘makin’ a daily total of
three dollars,’ says I.
“‘You undercharge, my friend,’ says he. ‘Never get rich that way. I
shall have to take you in hand,’ says he, just like that, ‘and teach you
how to set proper prices on your accommodations.’
“With that he moggs up-stairs—as cool as a cucumber. Bet he’s one of
them millionaires.”
We all stood and listened to the clerk while he was getting off this
talk, and then Catty and I went back to the store. We got there just in
time, for Mr. Atkins was sneakin’ out of the back door with his
fish-pole wrapped up in a newspaper—aiming to go and be shiftless for
the rest of the day.
“Where you goin’, Dad?” says Catty, sober as a judge.
“Jest out,” says Mr. Atkins.
“You won’t need that fish-pole,” says Catty, “and you got to kalsomine
Johnson’s kitchen this afternoon.”
Mr. Atkins let out a groan and came back as meek as Moses. The way Catty
watched him and bossed him was a caution to cats.
That afternoon Catty and I walked around by Jim Bockers’ shop to take a
look. He was getting ready to open up to-morrow. He had a big stock of
everything in his line, and a new sign, and just as we were getting
there he was tacking up a big piece of white cloth with something
painted on it. We waited to read it. It says:
The Best and Cheapest
Get your painting and paperhanging done here
We Guarantee To Do Work Cheaper
Get prices elsewhere, and then come to us. We will do any job
for five per cent. less than any competitor. We positively
guarantee this
I looked at Catty and Catty looked at me. “If he guarantees to take any
job for less than you’ll take it for, how do you calc’late ever to get a
job?” says I.
“Maybe folks won’t b’lieve him,” says Catty.
“They’ll try, anyhow,” says I, “and if he’s tellin’ the truth, he’ll git
the business.”
“Maybe so,” says Catty, but he didn’t seem as worried as I was. “Dad and
me is doing business as cheap as it can be done. If this feller knocks
off five per cent, off’n our prices, he’ll lose money every time he
takes a job. He won’t last long at that.”
“Maybe he kin work cheaper ’n you.”
“He can’t.”
“Wa-al,” says I, “you ought to do something or other, hadn’t you?”
“Calc’latin’ to,” says he.
“What?” says I.
“Dunno—yet,” says he, “but I’m goin’ to figger it out. There is some way
to beat Bockers at this here game, and if there is it kin be found, and
if it kin be found, why, I kin find it if I figger hard enough.”
That was the way Catty always went at things. He started by believing it
was possible to do anything. Then he said to himself that if it was
possible for _somebody_ to do it, why, it was possible for _him_ to do
it, and if it was possible for him then there wasn’t anything left to do
but just go ahead and _do_ it. He was the determinedest kid I ever saw.
Never seemed to git discouraged, and with all his working and figuring
he always had time to learn something new about being respectable.
There wasn’t a day he didn’t pick up something brand-new about manners,
or about how to wear your necktie, or about what folks that was thought
well of by everybody did. He was always watching, and he made his
father’s meal-times miserable by teaching _him_ what he had learned and
making him quit eating pie with his knife and wiping his mouth on his
sleeve, and such. Poor Mr. Atkins got so he was afraid to move at the
table till Catty explained to him how it ought to be done. Once in a
while he complained.
“Catty,” says he, as doleful as a funeral, “you’re a-goin’ to starve
your Dad to death. With all these manners I’m plumb losin’ my appetite.
I’m scared. Every time I take a bite I’m all excited for fear I hain’t
bit it according to the way the first families do their bitin’.”
“Stick to it, Dad,” says Catty. “I’m learnin’, too. After a while it ’ll
git to be a habit to eat right, and you won’t notice it. It ’ll come
natural.”
“Won’t never come natural not to eat pie with a knife. There’s two ways
to eat pie. One is to pick a hunk up in your hand and chaw it down.
T’other is to slice it with your knife and feed it in with the blade.
That’s how pie was intended to be ate.”
“Shucks!” says Catty, and then he stopped and waggled his finger. “There
you go layin’ your tools down onto the table. Hain’t I told you always
to put your knife and fork onto your _plate_ when you hain’t usin’ ’em?
Onto your _plate_.... And look at your spoon! Stickin’ up out of your
coffee-cup. Jerk it out _quick_ and lay it in the sasser.”
Mr. Atkins was like to cry, I thought, but he did like he was told.
“Bein’ respectable,” says he, “is about the uncomfortablest way of
livin’ on earth. I’d rather I was a wild Injun eatin’ raw meat,” says
he.
“You hain’t no Injun, Dad. You’re a business man, and livin’
respectable. And more ’n that, you’re goin’ to keep on that way till
every man and woman and baby in this town will point to you and say,
‘There goes Mr. Atkins, the respectablest man that ever lived.’”
“It’s an awful prospect,” says Mr. Atkins, that gloomy you would have
thought he was just going to be taken out and drownded. “I don’t
calc’late ever to be happy again.”
“Wait,” says Catty, “till we kin afford to git you them dress-up
clothes....”
“Sufferin’ mugwumps!” Mr. Atkins says from the bottom of his heart.
“Here,” Catty says, “what you a-doin’, Dad? Look at your napkin. Stuck
in your collar like you was goin’ to shave....”
“Doggone!” says Mr. Atkins, and after that he didn’t say a word during
the meal.