“You ought to like it,” says Catty, “and so you _got_ to like it. Take you and me as we be, and we hain’t worth a basket of shucks. We don’t amount to nothin’. Nor we wouldn’t never amount to nothin’ if we went on like we was goin’.... That reminds me—I got to begin makin’ you take lessons in table manners. I’m takin’ ’em off of Wee-wee. Not that Wee-wee has got any manners to spare,” says he, “but he’s got more ’n me. As soon as I’ve learned all he knows, I’m goin’ to somebody else—maybe his mother.” I told Dad about that and he laughed fit to split. “You tell Catty to come right along any time he needs a dose of manners you can’t give him,” says he. You could see a difference in Catty already—the way he acted and the way he walked, and sometimes the way he talked, but you couldn’t see any difference in his father outside of having his whiskers trimmed and that painter’s suit. He _looked_ pretty respectable, but down inside he was just as shiftless as ever. He must have thought a lot of Catty to let him do the way he did. If I was a man and wanted to be shiftless, you bet I wouldn’t let any kid make me work the way Catty made him work. You bet I wouldn’t. Somehow, in spite of the women-folks, Catty managed to get a few little jobs of painting and paperhanging—enough to keep his father busy. There was lots of jobs he could have had if it hadn’t been for the women talking against him, but he just went along and paid no attention. The work he got was mostly from bachelors and widowers. “Dunno what I’m a-goin’ to do when the single men is all painted up,” says he. “And when Jim Bockers opens his shop,” says I. “He’s openin’ to-morrow,” says Catty. “Wisht I had money enough to start my ice-cream stand. Wisht I had money enough to git a better stock of wall-paper than Bockers ’ll have.” “Wishin’ won’t git ’em,” says I. “Wishin’ ’ll start to git ’em,” says he. “First you wish, and then you dig out and git.... I’m goin’ to figger to git Dad a black suit and one of them hard-boiled hats,” says he, “so’s he kin go to church Sundays. Goin’ to church is respectable.” “Be hard to make him take the only day he has to be shiftless with and use it up goin’ to church,” says I. “First he knows,” says Catty, “he won’t want to be shiftless any more. I’ll bet if Dad ever started in to like business he’d be a good one.” I think it was that very day that we first saw the Man Who Looked As If He Was the Proprietor of the Earth.