Next morning bright and early I hustled down to the shanty where Catty and his father were staying. Mr. Atkins was sitting on his log, fishing for pickerel and looking pretty sober and dubious. Catty was sitting alongside of him, looking into the bayou and never saying a word. “Mornin’,” says I. “Mornin’,” says Catty. Mr. Atkins turned his head and waggled it at me. “He’s went and gone and done it,” says he. “What?” “Made up his mind to hitch up to this town.” “Good!” says I. “He told us last night.” “Dad don’t like it much,” said Catty, “but it ’ll be good for him. I’ve thought it out.” Now wasn’t that a funny way for a boy to talk—about something being good for his Dad? You would have thought Catty was the Dad and his father was the boy. “Yes,” says Catty, “it won’t be so much fun, maybe, and maybe it ’ll be more. I think Dad ’ll grow to like it, and he might even grow to like workin’ reg’lar. I hain’t expectin’ that, ’cause he’s been shiftless so many years, but maybe.” “Work,” says Mr. Atkins, sadlike. “Lots of folks does it constant,” says Catty. “They have to,” says his father. “You’ll have to now—some. Mind, I don’t expect you to work every day and all day long. You kin sort of git the habit by degrees. But if you don’t work _some_ we’ll never git the respect of these here folks. I’ve been studyin’ it over, and seems like a body’s _got_ to work to git folks’s respect. Don’t matter how good you be nor how happy you be, nor that you hain’t never done nobody any harm. You got to _work_. Seems kind of funny to me. If you jest work you git some respect. If you work a lot and make a little money you git more respect. But the feller that gits most respect is the one that works at makin’ other folks work for him. I’m goin’ to be that kind.” “Meanin’ me?” says his father, as doleful as a tombstone. “Have to start with you, I calc’late. Hain’t figgered out what to do first, exceptin’ that it ’ll have to be somethin’ to git me some money. ’Course I could start out runnin’ errants or cuttin’ grass, or even workin’ in a store, but there hain’t nothin’ in that. What I got to do is to figger out a business that’s mine and that I kin run, and where I can hire some other kid instead of somebody hirin’ me. That’s the way to git ahead.” “But you’ll have to work for somebody to make some money to start,” says I. “I dunno,” says he. “I’m huntin’ for a scheme—and then I’m studyin’ out what kind of a business I want to git into.” “Hain’t it miserable?” says Mr. Atkins. “Here we been goin’ along for years with nothin’ to bother us. Didn’t have to work and didn’t have to study about schemes. Now all of a sudden this here thing comes down on top of us. Don’t know where Catty gits sich notions from. Not from me. Must come off’n his mother’s side.” “How much money you got to have?” I asked Catty. “Dunno, ’cause I dunno what I want it for.” “Maybe my Dad ’u’d lend it to you,” says I. “He won’t,” says Catty, emphatic. “Why?”