“Dad’s remembered,” says he, “but he’s a-thinkin’ it over. He won’t tell us till he’s got it figgered out to suit himself. I don’t care so long as he sticks at work and keeps on tryin’ to be respectable. I got him now so he kin eat pie with a fork. It was a chore to teach him, but it’s done. Next he’ll be eatin’ soup without makin’ a noise like a horse runnin’ through a mud-puddle.” Catty said all this as sober as a judge. He wasn’t poking fun at his father nor being impudent. He was just saying what was so in the best way he knew how. All of a sudden Mr. Atkins spoke up. “Wee-wee,” says he, “what’s your notions about medicine-shows?” “Medicine-shows?” says I. “What about ’em?” “Regard ’em as proper and respectable?” says he. “They’re lots of fun,” says I, “especially when they pull folks’s teeth free and have real Injuns doin’ war-dances and things.” “You like ’em, then?” “Sure,” says I. “But s’posin’ the feller sells medicine for a dollar a bottle that he guarantees to cure up rheumatics and cramps in the stummick and chills and warts and corns and freckles and backache and earache—and supposin’ that medicine hain’t worth the speck on a toad’s ear to cure _anythin’_? How about that?” “Did the doctor know it?” says I. “Yes,” says he. “Then he was a cheat,” says I. “To be sure,” says he. “A cheat. I calc’late that’s what he was—and maybe worse. How’d you look at sich a feller—as bein’ what Catty calls respectable, or not?” “Not,” says I. “Um!... My way of thinkin’, too. If you seen sich a feller runnin’ some other business and aimin’ to get aholt of folks’s money, what would your notions be about how he was goin’ to treat ’em?” “I’d guess,” says I, “that he was goin’ to cheat ’em, too.”