“But he don’t mean it,” says Catty. “Now let’s pertend we’re settin’ at table. We’ll git sticks and chips for plates and the tools to eat with, and you sort of show me jest how each one is used respectable. I got to learn so’s I kin teach Dad. He’s goin’ to need manners perty soon, ’cause I’m goin’ to see to it he goes places where manners comes in handy. Now while it’s vacation, I got time to monkey with manners. When school-time comes I’m a-goin’ to be perty busy with gittin’ educated and runnin’ my shop.” It sounded kind of funny to me, but we fiddled around and got chips and sticks and made believe they was knives and forks and plates and cups and things. We spread them on top of a flat stone and started in to make believe we was eating. We started with soup, and I explained to Catty that the way to eat soup was off’n the _side_ of your spoon, and not to ram the whole thing into your mouth, point first, like a fellow wants to and the way it is handiest. I never could see any sense to eating soup that way. It sort of takes the pleasure out of it. And I told him you mustn’t make any noise. A fellow gets more enjoyment out of soup when he can sort of _whoosh_ it into his mouth off of his spoon, but it hain’t anyways polite to do it. Well, Catty ate soup quite a spell, doing it over and over till he was sure he had it down pat. I never saw anybody so thorough on the soup-eating question. He practised and practised till I’ll bet he could eat soup as good as Queen Victoria. Then we went on to other things, and practised them over and over; and we monkeyed with napkins, and with getting up from the table, and the whole business. I didn’t know I was acquainted with so many table manners till I started to teach Catty, but I knew quite a mess—most of which I didn’t use much as a common thing. We put in a whole hour at it, and it was hard work. “There,” says Catty, “I guess I got the hang of it. Dunno but what I’d git scared if I was company some place, and mess things up, but I’ll practise with Dad every day till I git it down fine.” “You’re dog-gone anxious about manners and things,” says I. “I got to be,” says he, “because folks won’t expect me to have any, and when they see I got ’em they’ll be surprised, and it ’ll help ’em to git the idee I’m respectable. Dad and me has got to be more p’tic’lar about sich things than you folks have that has always been looked at as respectable.” Well, Catty and I fussed around the rest of that day and didn’t do much but rest and listen to Mr. Atkins tell how hard work it was to work, and that a body enjoyed tramping around the country more than he did spreading paint on a board full of slivers, but Catty kept at him, and held him down to it, and told him he’d get used to it in a little while and enjoy it.