“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. “Calc’lated she would,” says Catty. The way he said it, kind of sober and dry, made me laugh right out. “Figger Mr. Gage is goin’ to git unpleasant things said to him ’fore mornin’.” He sat down in a chair like he was all tired out. “It’s dog-gone hard work to git respectable,” says he. CHAPTER IX “Now let’s see,” says Catty on Sunday afternoon while we were sitting under a tree down by the bayou. “I guess everything’s ready for to-morrow. We got our paints on credit; we got our brushes and them things, we got our painters, and we got our ladders, and the only ready money we had to have was for our painter’s clothes for Dad. Seems like you can git a lot without money sometimes, don’t it?” “But you got to have money some time,” says I. “To be sure,” says Catty, “but the money’s comin’ after the job. We kin finish it in a week, and then we’ll have quite a wad. But we ought to have some in the mean time. Got to eat.... I’ll have to scurry around and git some, I guess. That and keepin’ an eye on Dad so’s he won’t go traipsin’ off to fish or set down alongside of a brook, or tramp off through the country, will about keep me busy.” “I never saw anybody look so different as your father does,” says I. “It hain’t a patch on how different he’ll look when I git through with him,” says Catty. “Say, Wee-wee, you know quite a lot about manners, don’t you? Your Ma and Pa teaches you how to eat proper and all that?” “Dad says sometimes that I hain’t got no more manners than an alley cat,” says I.