That was the way Catty always went at things. He started by believing it was possible to do anything. Then he said to himself that if it was possible for _somebody_ to do it, why, it was possible for _him_ to do it, and if it was possible for him then there wasn’t anything left to do but just go ahead and _do_ it. He was the determinedest kid I ever saw. Never seemed to git discouraged, and with all his working and figuring he always had time to learn something new about being respectable. There wasn’t a day he didn’t pick up something brand-new about manners, or about how to wear your necktie, or about what folks that was thought well of by everybody did. He was always watching, and he made his father’s meal-times miserable by teaching _him_ what he had learned and making him quit eating pie with his knife and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and such. Poor Mr. Atkins got so he was afraid to move at the table till Catty explained to him how it ought to be done. Once in a while he complained. “Catty,” says he, as doleful as a funeral, “you’re a-goin’ to starve your Dad to death. With all these manners I’m plumb losin’ my appetite. I’m scared. Every time I take a bite I’m all excited for fear I hain’t bit it according to the way the first families do their bitin’.” “Stick to it, Dad,” says Catty. “I’m learnin’, too. After a while it ’ll git to be a habit to eat right, and you won’t notice it. It ’ll come natural.” “Won’t never come natural not to eat pie with a knife. There’s two ways to eat pie. One is to pick a hunk up in your hand and chaw it down. T’other is to slice it with your knife and feed it in with the blade. That’s how pie was intended to be ate.” “Shucks!” says Catty, and then he stopped and waggled his finger. “There you go layin’ your tools down onto the table. Hain’t I told you always to put your knife and fork onto your _plate_ when you hain’t usin’ ’em? Onto your _plate_.... And look at your spoon! Stickin’ up out of your coffee-cup. Jerk it out _quick_ and lay it in the sasser.” Mr. Atkins was like to cry, I thought, but he did like he was told. “Bein’ respectable,” says he, “is about the uncomfortablest way of livin’ on earth. I’d rather I was a wild Injun eatin’ raw meat,” says he. “You hain’t no Injun, Dad. You’re a business man, and livin’ respectable. And more ’n that, you’re goin’ to keep on that way till every man and woman and baby in this town will point to you and say, ‘There goes Mr. Atkins, the respectablest man that ever lived.’” “It’s an awful prospect,” says Mr. Atkins, that gloomy you would have thought he was just going to be taken out and drownded. “I don’t calc’late ever to be happy again.” “Wait,” says Catty, “till we kin afford to git you them dress-up clothes....” “Sufferin’ mugwumps!” Mr. Atkins says from the bottom of his heart. “Here,” Catty says, “what you a-doin’, Dad? Look at your napkin. Stuck in your collar like you was goin’ to shave....”