“But I can’t do that. Now you look here, Sonny, I’ll give you a quarter if you’ll let down that barrier and let me cross.” “Can’t be done,” says Catty. “I’ll make it a half.” “Nothin’ doin’.” “I’ll make it a dollar.” “You couldn’t git to cross this bridge for _ten_ dollars,” says Catty, “not unless the man in that house says you kin.” “What’s he got to do with it?” “If he was to say you could cross, then I wouldn’t stop you,” says Catty. “Run down and ask him, then.” “My job’s to stay right here.” “You go,” says Kinderhook to me. “My job’s stayin’ here, too,” says I. “There hain’t but one way to do,” says Catty, “and that’s for you to go yourself. ’Tain’t a quarter of a mile.” Well, Kinderhook he grumbled and said a lot of words and sentences and things, but he got down off the seat and went across the bridge and started down the road—and he never paid any attention at all to the package that had the churn in it. He just left that standing in the back of the buggy. He hadn’t got more than a hundred yards before Catty was back there. “You keep your eye on him,” says he, “while I stick my nose into the churn.” “Be careful,” says I, “that you don’t git it churned into butter. You wouldn’t look handsome with a pad of butter in the middle of your face.” “You’d be improved if you had a pad of butter inside of your head instead of what you got,” says be, with a grin, and began trying to find a way to look at the churn without disturbing the package so it would be noticed. The package was a kind of a big box made out of some sort of cardboard—one of those things they ship packages of breakfast food or something in, and it was just tied up with a rope. In about two seconds Catty turned up a corner of the top and looked inside, and then he said something under his breath that sounded like he didn’t have enough breath left to speak louder. “Wee-wee,” says he, “come here and look.” I went and looked, and I ’most lost my breath, too, because there wasn’t a dog-gone thing in that package but the big water-pitcher out of the hotel. “What kind of a churn is that?” says I. “That,” says Catty, “is a kind of a churn I never seen in any catalogue.” “What’s the idee?” says I. “Hanged if I know,” says he, “unless he jest stuck that in to make the package feel like it had somethin’ in it if anybody lifted it.” He stood there a second, thinking, and then he banged the buggy with his fist. “I got it,” says he. “Kinderhook didn’t have no churn a-tall. Not no kind of a churn whatever. And he’s got to have one. He’s got to give his demonstration. See? And so now he’s got to git him a model to do the demonstratin’ with. I guess we got Mr. Kinderhook’s goose close to cooked.” “Maybe,” says I. “You can’t never tell. This looks like some kind of a scheme to me.” “Here he comes,” says Catty. “I calc’late it would be healthier if we wasn’t here when he come, too.” “B’lieve you’re right,” says I, and we slid off into the bushes and hid.