Those clothes seemed to make quite a difference in him, too. He _acted_ different. He didn’t act so much like Mr. Atkins any more, but like another man that wasn’t shiftless at all and really liked to work. That is, he acted that way part of the time, and when he was feeling shiftless he sort of kept out of sight so folks wouldn’t see it. Catty said his father was really getting interested in the work, and he was hoping he would get interested in being respectable. From that day nobody ever saw Mr. Atkins in any clothes but good ones. He didn’t wear his painter’s suit, though he wanted to. Catty wouldn’t let him. Every morning before Mr. Atkins could get out of his room Catty looked him all over to see he was dressed right. It was funny. It was almost as if Catty had taken a jack-knife and whittled out a man, his father was getting to be so different to what he used to be. Catty and I began trailing around after Mr. Kinderhook whenever we got a chance, but we hadn’t even seen anything that looked suspicious. He just looked rich and important, and he acted rich and important and puffed up. To see him sitting on the hotel porch like he owned the whole state, and being kind to folks and behaving toward them just like he thought they were as good as he was, was a sight. He never talked about his factory and what he was going to manufacture unless somebody started it first and then urged him on, and then he acted sort of like the subject tired him and he didn’t want to be bothered with it. We listened to him a dozen times, and couldn’t see how he was planning to gouge anybody. “Maybe he’s reformed,” says I. “Bet he hain’t. He don’t look reformed,” says Catty. “If he was the kind of man that was willin’ to make money sellin’ cheat medicine to old women with the rheumatiz that wouldn’t help ’em a bit and maybe made ’em worse, why, he’s bad yet. But I can’t see how he’s plannin’ to _be_ bad.” “It’s sure he hain’t tryin’ to sell any shares in his factory.” “Looks that way,” says Catty. “’Course he sold some to Captain Winton.” “But not to anybody else, and everybody is crazy to buy.” “I heard him say this mornin’ that his company was all incorporated, whatever that is, and he expected to start in buildin’ soon,” says Catty. “I wonder what ‘incorporated’ is?” “Haven’t any idee,” says I. “Maybe it means somethin’ like planned out.” “Maybe. I heard him tell Mr. Gage that he didn’t have any patent on this churn of his, because if he was to patent it he would have to give away the secret and somebody would sell it. He says there’s a secret part, and nobody kin find out how to make it, so he hain’t goin’ to git a patent at all, but just go to work and manufacture and prevent anybody from findin’ out how it’s done.”