“Pesterin’ your ol’ Dad, eh? Crept up jest to pester me when I was a-sittin’ and thinkin’ and reasonin’ out how to ketch a big fish. One of these here times, young feller, I’m a-goin’ to ketch you jest when you start to pester me, and pieces of you ’ll come rainin’ down more ’n six mile away.” What he said was awful ferocious, but the way he said it wasn’t ferocious a mite. “Go ’way,” says he, “and pester somebody else.” “Dad,” says Catty, “you used to be a painter, didn’t you?” “Who? Me?... Say, young feller, since I quit there hain’t been no _real_ painters ’cause there hain’t nobody to teach ’em. Paint! Now I come to think back there never was sich a painter as me, not for speed nor for skill nor for nothin’. One time I call to mind a man and his wife that wanted their house painted. He wanted it red and she was sot on blue. They called me in and give me the job of satisfyin’ both of ’em, and I done it. Nobody else could ’a’ managed it.” “How’d you do it?” I asked, because it looked like a puzzler to me. “Painted it blue,” says he. “But that only satisfied the woman. Didn’t her husband complain?” “Nary. Come to find out he was colorblind. Jest let on to him that I was paintin’ it bright red, and he never knowed the difference. Don’t to this day. Figgers he’s got a red house when ’tain’t no more red than a blue jay. That’s the kind of a painter I was.” “Do you remember how, Dad? Could you paint now if you was of a mind to?” “Could I paint now? Ho! Why, if folks was to see me paint once all the other painters ’u’d be out of a job. I kin shut both my eyes and tie my right hand and outpaint any other man in the U-nited States of America, with Canady throwed in. I kin paint more in a day than any other feller kin in four, and do it better and more artistic.” “That’s fine,” says Catty, with a kind of a funny look around his eyes, “because you’re goin’ to start in Monday.” “Start in what?” “Paintin’.” “Paintin’ what?” “Big warehouse.” “You mean me—your own Dad that raised you?” “Yes.” “Now you look here. You hadn’t ought to of done that. Why, I hain’t used to paintin’. It’s been nigh ten year since I touched a paint-brush! Why, I plumb lost the habit! Dunno’s I could dip a brush in a paint-pail. Never was much of a painter, nohow.” “You _said_ you was the best.” “So I was,” said Mr. Atkins, stubbornly. “Said you could do it better now than anybody.” “Kin.” “Then what you mean by sayin’ you lost the habit and never was any good?” “Jest a way of speakin’. Didn’t want to scare you. I _kin_ paint and I _could_ paint, but I been so long away from paint that it would be mighty dangerous for me to git near it agin. “Why?” “Painters’ colic. I’d git doubled up with it in a minnit. Frightful ailment. Nothin’ worse. If I was to be took with it when I was on top of a ladder nothin’ ’u’d save me. Down I’d come, _ker-plop_, and most likely bust my neck. Then what _’u’d_ you do?” “That’s bad, Dad, but we got to risk it.”