“Wouldn’t if I was you, Mrs. Gage,” says Mr. Wade, who must have been watching the fight. “If I ever saw anybody get a licking he deserved, it was your son. It was two to one, too. If I were you, ma’am, I’d go home and keep kind of still about this. I’ll be a witness for this boy, and I guess most of this crowd will. You will, won’t you, Captain Winton?” “I shall be glad to,” says the captain. “This boy stood up for himself the way a gentleman should. He showed the proper spirit. Your son got what he deserved.” Mrs. Gage turned around without another word and marched off, and Captain Winton shook hands with Catty. “Young man,” said he, “I want to congratulate you. A boy with less courage would never have resented an insult when he had to fight two to one.” “I didn’t have to,” said Catty. “Wee-wee would have helped, but I wouldn’t let him. It was _my_ fight.” “If the Gages make any trouble, come to me,” says Captain Winton, and then we went along toward the hotel to look after our business with Mr. Kinderhook. It wasn’t the last we heard of that scrap, by a long sight, but on the whole I guess it did Catty more good than it did harm. It made him some friends, and if it made his enemies madder than ever, why, what of it? They were about as mean to him as they could be before, and a little more trouble stirred up couldn’t hardly be noticed. I will say that a good many folks in town took sides with Mrs. Gage, and there was lots of talk, and some of them really tried to get together enough influence to have Catty sent to the Reform School because he was a dangerous character. But my father got together with Captain Winton and Mr. Wade, and they backed Catty up like good ones, so that nothing came of it. But one thing did come and that was that Banty and Skoodles didn’t call any more names to Catty when he could hear them. But somebody did sneak around at night and tack a sign on their store with “Tramp” printed on it in big letters, and every day, almost, Catty or his father would get a post-card with nothing on it but just “Tramp—git out of town.” We made up our minds that it was Skoodles and Banty doing this, and I says to Catty that we’d better get our heads together to make them quit. At first Catty wasn’t going to pay any attention, but after a day or so he got pretty mad. “Guess we better do somethin’,” says he. “I don’t care so much, but it hain’t right I should stand it. I got to stand up for myself and make folks respect me and Dad. If I don’t make them, why, they’ll jest go on _not_ respectin’ us. The way to git folks respectful is to _make_ them that way—fix it so they know if that hain’t respectful somethin’ onpleasant ’ll happen quick.” “What ’ll we do?” says I. “I dunno,” says he. “It ’ll take some thinkin’, but, whatever it is, it’s got to make ’em look ridic’lous. It’s got to make everybody give ’em the laugh.”