Just on the edge of town was a big stock-farm where a company raised Holstein cattle. There were half a dozen big barns—bigger than any barns in our county, all painted white. Everything inside the barns was white, too. The way those folks kept their cattle you would have thought they were made out of diamonds instead of beef just like any other cow. There was a bull there that we heard had cost more than fifty thousand dollars. Catty and I were talking about that bull and we figured that a steak off of him would cost about a hundred dollars a bite. Eating that bull would be sort of like as if cannibals was to capture Mr. Rockefeller and eat him.

All at once Catty says, “They must be paintin’ on them barns all the time to keep ’em so white.”

“Dunno,” says I.

“Bet they do,” says he. “I’m goin’ out to find out about it. Comin’?”

We set out to walk. It took us ’most an hour to get there, and when we did get there those barns looked even bigger than I had remembered them. We went right through the gate and up to a little house marked “Office.” There were two men in there, one in overalls and another slim man, not exactly dressed up, but not looking as if he spent much time washing out stalls. Catty rapped on the door, and the man in overalls looked up and said to come in.

“I’m looking for the boss,” says Catty. “I’m him,” says the man in overalls. “What is it?”

“You got fine, white, clean-lookin’ barns,” says Catty.

The man that didn’t have overalls sort of grinned, and the boss he kind of grinned, too. “Much ’bleeged,” says he. “Is that what you come to say?”

“No,” says Catty. “What I come to say was that that biggest barn with Number Three painted on it don’t look as good as the rest. Seems like it needed paintin’.”

Both men laughed. “Now I call that neighborly,” says the boss. “Wasn’t figgerin’ on offerin’ to paint it for us, was you?”

“I was,” says Catty, and both the men laughed again.

“Fetch your brush?” says the boss.

Catty looked at him kind of solemn. “I come to talk business,” says he, firm but polite. “If you’re figgerin’ on havin’ that barn painted, I’d like to git the chance to bid on the job.”

The men laughed again, but this time the man that was in his regular clothes says: “Let me have a word with this kid. He’s got something on his mind, I guess.” The other man nodded.

“What makes you think you could paint that barn?” says the man.

“Well,” says Catty, “we painted Mr. Manning’s big warehouse, and we done a good, satisfactory job. Mr. Manning said so. I kin refer you to him.”

“Who is we?,” says the man.

“Dad and me—and Jack Phillips. Jack’s a partner now. We calc’late to be engineers, architects, contractors, painters, and interior decorators,” says he.

“Is that all?” says the overall man. “Don’t you do plain and fancy cookin’ and crochet lace?”

Catty looked at him full in the eye for a minute and then he says, without a smile, “If you kin show me where there’s any money in it for the firm, well tackle it,” says he.

“By Jing!” says the man in the clothes, and he leaned forward a little. “Tell me some more. Are you the outside man for the firm? Do you bring in the business?”

“I’ve got most of it so far. We started in to do paintin’ and paperhangin’ alone, but the folks in town took a dislike to us and the wimmin got in another painter and paper-hanger that’s underbiddin’ us. We hain’t gettin’ much in that line. There wa’n’t nothin’ for us to do but branch out. So we went into buildin’ and architecture and sich.”

“Why didn’t the folks like you?”

Catty told him, and the man listened like he was interested.

“And you’re going to stick?” he asked. “You figure you can beat public opinion?” Catty’s mouth shut tight a minute and his eyes got bright.

“We’ll stick or bust,” says he. “We’re respectable. We hain’t shiftless any more, leastways most of the time we hain’t. Dad has his shiftless days, but they’re gettin’ fewer and fewer, and I keep my eye on him sharp. Pretty soon he’ll be respectable all the way through. We calc’late to give everybody a square deal, and if we kin jest keep on gittin’ work until everybody sees we hain’t tramps, but respectable folks, I don’t see but what we’ll git where I want to git.”

“Where’s that?” says the man.

“I want Dad should be the most respectable business man in this county,” says Catty.

“Did you ever hear the like!” says the man to the boss.

“Never did,” says the boss. “That barn’s been needin’ paintin’ for months. Can’t spare the men to do it off the regular work, and couldn’t git anybody in town to tackle it. Just had to let it slide.”

“Can you get men to do this job?” asked the boss.

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“As many as Dad thinks is necessary to do it right. Dad he knows his business well.”

“Give us a figger, then,” says the boss. Catty thought a minute. “Mister,” says he, “don’t all these buildin’s have to be painted about once a year—inside and out?”

“Mostly whitewash inside,” says the boss. “Then,” says Catty, “why hain’t it good business for both of us if I was to give you a figger on doin’ all the work by the year? Doin’ all the paintin’ and whitewashin’ necessary, and takin’ all that worry off of your hands.”

“Young man,” says the man with the clothes, “you have ideas. You see where you’re going, and I’m going to make a bet that you get there. That is a business-like proposition. You make a proposition along that line.”

“Thankee, sir. Good mornin’. I’ll have that bid in so quick you’ll be s’prised.”

We hustled back, and Catty got his father to hire a rig and drive right out to the stock-farm. Mr. Atkins spent all the rest of the day there, and Catty spent the rest of the day there sort of moving his father along from one thing to another and seeing to it he didn’t lie down in any shady spots or take any strolls back into the woods. Mr. Atkins made heaps of measurements, and talked a lot to the boss, and when he got to talking business and got really interested he acted like he was another man. He spoke kind of sharp and brisk, and he give you the idea that he knew what he was about. It was funny the way he was changing. You couldn’t notice it much every day, but if you looked at him as he was now and like he was when he first came to town, you wouldn’t believe what you saw.

That night he and Jack Phillips sat up late going over figures, and early the next morning they had things ready to show to the stock-farm company.

“Catty ought to take the figures out,” says Jack. “He landed the job.”

Mr. Atkins looked at Catty and heaved a big breath.

“He done so,” says he, and his eyes sort of twinkled. “Catty’s a terror. He’s a-ruinin’ my life. Fust I know he’ll make a rich man out of me, and I’ll have to buy me one of them silk hats like he was talking about, and nobody knows but what I’ll have to git me a cane to wear Sundays.”

“Catty,” says Jack, “is the best man in this firm.”

Well, we walked out to the farm and showed those men the figures, and Catty had listened so he was able to explain anything they didn’t understand. The upshot of it was that the boss signed the contract Jack had written, and Atkins & Phillips had landed the job of doing all the painting for the Greenfields Holstein Farms for a year. It was a whaling big contract, too. Catty figured they would make a fair living out of it, even if they didn’t get another stroke of work to do.

“We’re growin’,” says he. “Now we got to save out money so as to git a lot ahead to branch out with. What we need most right now is money.”

“It’s what most folks needs,” says I. “I need a little myself. ’Most always do.”

“Now,” says Catty, “we got to give a little time to Jim Bockers. We got all the work we need this minute, so I kind of figger to git some for Jim. The more he gits the more money he loses. I don’t calc’late runnin’ us out of town ’s goin’ to be very profitable for some folks.” We walked up the street to take a look at the cellar of Mr. Witherspoon’s house, and just in front of the bank we saw Mr. Arthur Peabody Kinderhook talking to Captain Winton. I heard Captain Winton say:

“Don’t you think it would be advisable, Mr. Kinderhook, to interest a certain amount of local capital in your enterprises? I’m sure a number of our citizens would be willing to invest.”

“No.... No....” says Mr. Kinderhook. “I’m in business to make money for myself. The profits from this manufacturing operation will be handsome. I have the money to swing it without outside help. Why should I let in anybody else?”

“There really doesn’t seem to be any reason,” said Captain Winton, disappointed-like. “But I wish you would think it over.” Somehow it had got out that what Mr. Kinderhook was going to manufacture was a patent churn that got more butter out of cream than any other, and did it so easy that it wasn’t any work at all. It was a patent dingus that Mr. Kinderhook had the secret of, and folks was talking it about that he would make millions of dollars out of it. About a dozen times that week I heard one man or another sayin’ that he wished Kinderhook would let him stick in a little of his savings.

The rumor was around town that day that Kinderhook had bought a big piece of land along the railroad and was going to start in pretty soon to build a factory. Folks said there would be maybe three or four hundred people hired to work there, and everybody was getting excited. I heard one man say it would double the population of our town and make everybody’s property worth double what it had been, and that if every one there didn’t get rich out of it, why, it would be their own fault.

Catty told me that all sounded good to him. If lots of folks moved there, then there would be houses to build and paint and paper, and so Atkins & Phillips would make a lot more money. He was always thinking about Atkins & Phillips and making money and getting so respectable folks would be afraid to set down to the table with him. It seemed like he didn’t have anything else in his mind. Why, he even got to worrying about the way he talked and his father talked, and said it wasn’t the way respectable folks used words. He said they didn’t speak correct.

“Neither do I,” says I.

“But you’re goin’ to school to learn,” says he. “They teach you how to talk in school, don’t they?”

“Yes,” says I.

“Why?” says he.

“Because,” says I, “they have to have school from half past eight in the morning till half past three in the afternoon, and if they didn’t think up a lot of different things to teach, why, they wouldn’t know what to do with all their time.”

“Rats!” says he. “They teach you everything on purpose. They got a reason for it. You learn figgerin’ so’s to be able to count money and do business. That’s that. They teach you geography so’s you’ll know where to find places in the world if you want to git to ’em or sell things to ’em. They teach you writin’ and readin’ so’s you’ll be able to write letters about business and read letters and printed things about buyin’ and sellin’ goods. That’s why. All business. They run schools just so’s you can learn how to make a livin’—with the exception of teachin’ you how to talk. There hain’t but one reason for that. Bein’ able to talk right is a mark of bein’ respectable. There’s a certain way the best kind of folks talk, and if you kin talk that way, why, right off everybody believes you’re one of them.... And that’s good business, too. Bein’ respectable is useful in business, as Dad and me has found out. If we’d been respectable we wouldn’t ’a’ had all this trouble here.... So I’m goin’ to git after Dad to make him talk right.”

You see every word he said had something to do with business or being respectable. He had ’em on the brain. Table manners and clothes and talking right—nothing but the idea of being respectable, and so being able to do business the way it ought to be done, and the more business you done, why, the more respectable you was. That was Catty’s idea. Maybe he was right. I dunno.

Well, sir, a couple of weeks after that Mr. Kinderhook came into the store and says, “Can I have a sign printed here?”

“You kin,” says Catty, and he called his father. “This gentleman,” says he, “wants to have a sign painted.”

“I want a very large sign, sir,” says Mr. Kinderhook, beaming at Mr. Atkins like he wanted to kiss him. “I want it erected on a piece of property I have arranged to purchase as the site of my factory. The sign is to be ten feet high and thirty feet long, and I wish to have it white with enormous black letters—do you get the idea?”

“Want the letters to spell anythin’?” says Mr. Atkins, interested-like, “or was you jest figgerin’ on any letters at all put on helter-skelter?”

Mr. Kinderhook looked at him kind of funny a minute, and then he says: “I want the following words lettered: ‘This Is the Site of the Kinderhook Farm Utilities Corporation. Our Enormous Factory Will Be Completed January First.’ Can you manage it, my good man?”

“I kin,” said Mr. Atkins. “I calc’late I could put ’most anything onto sich a sign. I kin put that on easy. If you want, I kin put on somethin’ real hard.”

“That will do very well,” says Mr. Kinderhook, and he turned to walk toward the door.

“Was you calc’latin’ on payin’ for it?” says Mr. Atkins.

“Certainly—certainly.”

“Um!... Int’rested to know how much it ’ll cost you?”

“To be sure.”

“Then why didn’t you ask?” says Mr. Atkins. “When folks gives an order, and don’t worry none about how much they got to pay for it, I always git a sneakin’ idea it’s because they don’t calc’late they’ll ever have to pay. Funny notion, hain’t it?”

“Very,” says Mr. Kinderhook, with a funny kind of a grin. “But you must know me, sir. My name is Kinderhook.”

“Seen you ’round town,” says Mr. Atkins. “Been sort of lookin’ you over once or twice. Int’restin’ feller, you be, I sh’u’d say. Got int’restin’ and everythin’. Always wear that high hat?”

“I have done so for years.”

“Thought so. Habit, hain’t it? Wa’n’t born with it on, was you?”

Mr. Kinderhook laughed like he saw a mighty good joke. “No,” he said, “but my mother gave it to me soon after.”

“Price of that sign ’ll be a even hunderd dollars,” says Mr. Atkins.

“Perfectly satisfactory,” says Mr. Kinderhook, and he started for the door again.

“If it’s so doggone satisfactory,” says Mr. Atkins, “jest suppose you plunk down the money—now?”

“Before the sign’s completed? Why, that isn’t my way of doing business, sir.”

“It’s mine—in some cases,” says Mr. Atkins. “One hunderd dollars—in advance. No hunderd—no sign.”

“Don’t you trust me—me? I tell you I am Arthur Peabody Kinderhook.”

“Heard you say so. Tell you how it is: ’Tain’t that I mistrust you exact—and ’tain’t that I trust you. I dunno nothin’ about you. If I was to build that sign and spend money for lumber and paint, and put a lot of work onto it, I might worry about whether I was a-goin’ to git paid—if I hadn’t got paid in advance. Worryin’ upsets my stummick and puts me off’n my meals. That’s the idee, mister.”

Mr. Kinderhook laughed again, and with a pompous kind of gesture took out his pocket-book and threw five twenty-dollar bills onto the counter. “There you are,” he says, in a grand kind of way. “That shows you I’ve got the money.”

“What it shows,” says Mr. Atkins, “is that I got the money. That’s what int’rests me.... Afternoon, mister.”

Catty was staring at his father and so was I. The whole business wasn’t like Mr. Atkins at all. There was something shrewd about it that didn’t seem like Catty’s father. And he seemed like he was interested in getting money—which gen’ally he wasn’t. It sort of showed what he could be like if he wanted to—the kind of a man folks wouldn’t smouge very often.

“What ails you, Dad?” says Catty. “I never seen you act so before.”

“Um!... Keep your eye peeled, Catty, and maybe you’ll see me act like it ag’in. Somethin’ about that feller that don’t set right, somehow. There’s somethin’ about that feller—somethin’ about that feller—” He scratched his head and bit his thumb and rapped his knuckles on the counter. “Now did I ever see that feller before, or didn’t I?... And if I did, where did I?... And if I didn’t, what makes me think I did?... Um!... If ever I seen him it was some place and doin’ somethin’ that kind of set me ag’in’ him.... Kind of funny. Set my teeth on edge, that feller did.”

“But he’s a millionaire, Dad. Maybe we kin make lots of money out of him.”

“Millionaire, hey? Don’t say. Wa-al, I swan to man!... I’m a-goin’ to set down and think about that man, and remember if I kin remember him. I’ll call him to mind if I have to set and remember every man I ever seen since I was knee-high to a milkin’-stool. I’ll check ’em off one by one, I will.... It’s made me itch, I’m that curious.... Catty, I hain’t goin’ to do another tap of work till I remember who that feller is—if he’s anybody.”

And, just as he always did, Mr. Atkins kept his word to the letter.