Chapter 4

We could see out our windows over into the Wisners' windows--it seemed like they had forgot to pull down their blinds, same as we had. They didn't seem to be nobody at home, only one young man. He come in all by hisself, all dressed up, and there was three men waiting on him at the table. At length I calls attention to this, and Bonnie Bell turns her head and looks across.

"William," says she, "draw the blinds; and be more careful after this."

VI

US AND THEM BETTER THINGS

Well, things rocked along this way and we got through the winter someways, though every once in a while I taken a cold along of being shut up so much. There wasn't nowhere to go and nothing to do except to read the papers and wish you was dead.

Old Man Wright couldn't stand it no more; so he goes downtown and rents him a fine large office in a big building, with long tables with glass on top, and big chairs, something like in a bank. He didn't put no business sign on the door--just his name: J. W. Wright.

I'm lazy enough for anybody, like any cowpuncher--I don't believe in working only in spots; but sometimes I'd get so tired of doing nothing at the house that I'd get the chauffore to take me down to Old Man Wright's office, where I felt more at home. Nobody never come in to see us once--not in three months. We didn't have no neighbors, and we begun to see that that was the truth. I couldn't understand it, for we'd never got caught at nothing.

"Colonel," says I one morning, "do you reckon they're holding our past up against us anyways?" says I. "We spend a awful lot of money, but what do we get for it? Not a soul has came in our new house. As for me, I know I ain't earning no salary."

"Don't worry about that, Curly," says he. "You're getting plenty of grub and a place to sleep, ain't you? I'm the one that ought to worry, because I can't hardly find nothing to do here except make a little money."

"Won't there nobody play cards or nothing? Ain't there no sports in this town?" says I.

"Poker here is a mere name." He shakes his head. "If you push in a hundred before the draw you're guilty of manslaughter. But there is other ways of making money."

"How is the deferred payments on the Circle Arrow coming on?" says I.

"One come in, so far, interest and all," says he. "I wisht it hadn't. First thing I know, I'll be as rich as Old Man Wisner here. I see he wants to run for alderman up in that ward. Now I wonder what his game is there--it don't stand to reason he'd want to be a alderman now, unless there's something under it. You'd think he was trying to run the town and the whole world, too, wouldn't you?"

"I don't like that outfit," says I. "They ain't friendly. If a man don't neighbor with you, like enough he's stealing somewhere and don't want to be watched."

"That certainly is so," says he. "Still, I been busy enough for a while."

"The first thing you know," I says to him, "you'll lose your roll, and then where will we be?" But he only laughs at that.

"For instance," says he, "you see all them electric lights all over this town. I begun to study about them things when I first come here. There's a sort of little thing inside that they burn--carbon, they call it. I seen that everybody would keep their eyes on the light and not notice the carbon. But still they had to have carbon. I put a little into a company that made them things--not much; only a hundred thousand or so. Since then, what have they done? Why, they've turned in and gave me eighty per cent stock for nothing, and raised the cash dividend until I'm making twenty per cent on all I invested and what I didn't invest too. Such things bores me.

"Then again, there's my rubber business," says he, "rubber tires. The second day we owned the big car she busts a couple of tires--fifty dollars or so per each. I begun to figure out how many cars they was running in this town, up and down the avenue and all over all the other streets, each one of 'em with four tires on and any one of 'em liable to bust any minute. I figure the tires runs from fifteen to sixty dollars apiece and that somebody spends a lot of money for them. Then I went and bought into a good company that makes them things, a few months ago--not much; only a couple of hundred thousand or so. But what's the use?" He sets back and yawns, looking tired.

"I can't help it. I can't find no game in this country that's hard enough to play for to be interesting. What them rubber-tire people done was to make me a present of a whole lot of other stock the other day and raise the dividends. I can't buy into no company at all, it seems like, 'less'n every twenty minutes or so they up and declare another dividend. I don't like it. I wisht I could find some real man's-size game to play, because I'm like you--I get lonesome."

Still, he was looking thoughtful.

"Some games we can play," says he. "Then again, seems like there's others we can't. Now about the kid----"

"She's busy all the time," says I to him. "She reads and paints. Sundays she goes to church, while you and me only put on a collar that hurts. Week days she goes down to the picture galleries and into the liberry. She buys books. She's got her own cars--the big car and the electric brougham you give her on her birthday last week--ain't a thing in the world she ain't got. She's plumb happy."

"Except that she ain't!"

"You mean that we don't know nobody--nobody comes in to visit?" He nods. "Well, why don't we go in and call on them Wisner people that lives next to us?" says I.

"We can't do that; the rules of the game is that the folks living in a place first has to make the first call."

"That's a fool rule," says I.

"Shore it is; but Bonnie Bell knows all them rules and she ain't going to make any break--Old Man Smith taught her a few things--or maybe she learned it instinctive from her ma. Her ma was a Maryland Janney. They pretty near knew. And yet she told me---- Oh, shucks, Curly!"

"Well, what did she say?"

"She says she met Old Lady Wisner fair out on the sidewalk one morning and she was going to speak to her; they was both of them going down to their cars, which was standing side by side on the street. The old lady, she turns up her nose, such as there was of it, and she looks the other way. That hurt my girl a good deal. You know she ain't got a unkind thought in her heart for nobody or nothing on earth. She never was broke to be afraid of nothing or expect nothing but good of nobody--you and me taught her that, didn't we, Curly? And that old cat wouldn't look at my girl! Well, Curly, that's what I mean when I say there is some games that seems hard to play. Don't a woman get the worst of it every way of the deck, anyhow?"

"Well now," says I, "ain't there no way we can break in there comfortable like?"

"I don't see how," says he, shaking his head.

"Why can't we kill their dog?" says I. "Something friendly, just to start things going."

"That ain't no good," says he. "We tried it. Bonnie Bell already killed two of their dogs with her new electric brougham. You see, she had to go out and try it for herself, for she says she can ride anything that has hair on it, even if it's only curled hair in the cushions. First thing you know, the Wisner dog--pug nose it was, with its tail curled tight--it goes out on the road, acting like it owned the whole street, same as its folks does. Well, right then him and Bonnie Bell's new electric mixes it. The dog got the worst of it.

"Look-a-here, Curly," says he after a while, and pulls a square piece of paper outen his pocket. "Here's what we got in return for that--before Bonnie Bell had time to say she was sorry. The old lady wrote, for once:

Mrs. David Abraham Wisner requests that the people living next door to her exercise greater care in the operation of their vehicles, as the animal lost through the criminal carelessness of one of these people was of great value.

"Ain't that hell?" says he. "Cheerful, ain't it? No name signed to it--nothing! But you can see from that just how they felt. That was three days ago. They got a new dog. Well, this morning Bonnie Bell killed that one!

"The trouble with them dogs is, they been used to thinking they own this whole end of the street. They don't seem to recognize that we're anybody at all. It's a awful thing and it put Bonnie Bell in wrong. She didn't know what to do. She was so mad she wouldn't write. So she sends for Jimmie--I mean James, our chauffore--he's got almost sober lately, it being three months or so since Christmas, and him knowing a lot about dogs. So she buys a new dog for them--a large one that you can see easy, a collie dog; and Jimmie says he paid one-fifty for it."

"A dollar and a half is more than any dog is worth," says I, "especial a dog that has anything to do with someone like that Wisner woman."

"A dollar and a half!" says he. "A hundred and fifty is what it cost; this was a swell dog--a young collie about a year old. Well, Bonnie Bell, she sends it round by James, our chauffore, with her compliments. Their butler takes it in. I don't know whether it's going to stick or not. It's a sort of olive branch. You see, Bonnie Bell can't write to no such people, but she is sorry for killing their dogs and she wants to make good somehow. I think it was a right good way. It looks like she could hold her own, and yet like she was willing to meet 'em halfway.

"Well, that's all we can do," says he. "Let it go the way it lays on the board. I don't like Old Man Wisner a little bit anyhow."

"Well," says I, "if he's running for alderman, why don't you run for sher'f or something, just to keep occupied?"

"I'm studying my ward," says he. "I don't know very many of the saloon people yet. You have to be pretty far along to get to be sher'f in a place like this. But now, a alderman might be easier, if you went at it right. Anyways, the way they have acted, I feel like I'd copper any game Old Man Wisner was playing. I kind of feel in my bones that him and me is going to lock horns, Curly. I don't like the way he acts; and, I tell you, when I want a neighbor to be friendly with me he's got to be friendly sometime."

Old Man Wright gets up now and walks around some, kind of grinning.

"But, on the whole, I may find something to keep me busy here in town. For instance, Old Man Wisner is back of some sort of steal, shore as you're born, in the Lake Shore Electric Extension that's going on up in there--the paper says he's been selling it, or the interests has. Why? He never done a direct thing in his life--that ain't the way he does business; for that matter, it ain't the way business is done in the city nohow. It's always done at a side door, not at a front door, the way we done it on the Yellow Bull--straight out, even-Stephen.

"I figure he starts that story to make that stock cheap. Well, the other day I buy up a little of it, right cheap at that--not much; only a few hundred thousand dollars. Now I figure that if it ever goes up for Old Man Wisner it will go up some for me. I may buy some more of it. I don't know as it is worth anything--maybe not; but it certainly would please me if I could find some kind of a side game here where I couldn't make no money. I'm bored, Curly," says he; "that's what's the matter with me."

But still he came round again and again to the real center of our coming to town--Bonnie Bell. Him and me could have had a good time, but we knew perfectly well that she wasn't having no good time.

"Curly," says he, kind of frowning and his jaw working some, "she ain't got a friend in this whole damn town."

"Listen at you!" says I to him. "What are you talking about? She has got us, ain't she? We are her friends. We've raised her. We are going to take care of her. Ain't that enough?"

"No, Curly," says he to me; "we ain't enough."

VII

WHAT THEIR HIRED MAN DONE

"Well," says Old Man Wright to Bonnie Bell one day about four o'clock when we was having a cup of tea, which William insisted we ought to drink then, "what have them folks over there said about the dog you sent 'em?"

"They haven't said a word," says Bonnie Bell. "They kept the dog though. I don't think much of that outfit, if you ask me, dad," says she.

"Nor me neither," says he. "It was too bad you run over their dog, or so many of their dogs; but then you done what you could, sending 'em another dog as big as all you killed. A collie is right smart. I hope this one will keep on the sidewalk and not get under the wheels. That Boston dog of yours always has me guessing."

Well, we talked on a while, both of us sort of joshing her on her dog deal, until she gets up and goes away from the little table where she is setting and stands in front of the window, looking out, her teacup in her hand. All at once she says:

"Good Lord!"

"What's wrong?" says her pa, and we all holler at her. But she is out of the room and down at the door before we can stop her, all in her gingham apern and cap, like she is then; for she had been looking after the housecleaning--though William looks at her sad for not being dressed up more.

We went to the window and looked out. All at once we heard a awful barking going on down there, and we seen what had happened. That new dog of theirs had come into our yard to look around, and Bonnie Bell's Boston dog, Peanut--which mostly rode in her car with her--had jumped this here visiting dog, and they was having it out sincere, right in our front yard.

Well, sir, it was one of the prettiest fights you ever seen. A collie ain't no slouch in a scrap, and if this dog wouldn't of been so young he like enough could of licked Peanut, all right. But, you see, Peanut he was taking care of his own folks, according to the way he figured it, and this was a intrusion on the part of the Wisner dog.

Anything that's got bull pup in him, like Peanut had, ain't got no sense about fighting; so Peanut he mixed it with the collie copious, and they tumbled all over the yard until you couldn't hardly tell which was which. At last Peanut got himself a good leg holt, and the collie hollers bloody murder and starts for home and mother through the fence, Peanut hanging on.

It seems like their front door was open; and the collie he made for it, hollering every jump, and Peanut after him. He chases him plumb up the steps and clear into the house, and that was all we could see for a while, except Bonnie Bell standing in her cap and apern, looking across. Then through the window we could see folks running round here and there, like the dogs had got into the middle of the house and was still mixing it.

By and by--three or four minutes--their butler comes out, holding Peanut by the collar, and drops him on the front steps. But Peanut he is game, and he ain't had no satisfaction out of this scrap; so he goes back and scratches most of the paint offen their front door, and barks and howls, trying to get back in to finish his job.

Bonnie Bell she stands there just crying because she is so much ashamed, and she calls and whistles to Peanut. When he comes, at last, he does it looking over his shoulder and growling, and daring that other dog to come out and knock a chip off'n his shoulder.

When Bonnie Bell come back in, carrying Peanut, happy, by the loose skin of his neck, she was more worried than I ever seen her about anything.

"Now we've done it!" says she. "Our dog run right in their house and chased their dog. There was guests there, too--look at the cars standing out there. They was holding some kind of a party--bridge, like enough. Oh, whatever shall we do!"

"Come here, Peanut," says Old Man Wright; which Peanut jumps up on his lap then. "Have something on the house," says he; "and if that dog comes over in here eat him up!"

Peanut understands this perfect, and he goes to the window and tries to get out, and barks until you could hear him a block.

"That is some dog, sis," says her pa. "It looks like, anyhow, some of our family has broke into polite society for once. Come here, pup!" And he pats Peanut on the head and laughs like he is going to die over it. But not Bonnie Bell!

There was a awful silence come in between them two big houses after that. There wasn't anything that we seen fit to say and they didn't pay no attention to us. Their hired man--that worked round the back yard sometimes in overalls and a sweater--he sometimes walks out in the yard with their collie, but he takes mighty good care to keep on his own side of the fence.

It was getting spring by now--sort of raw weather once in a while; but the grass was getting green, and some of Bonnie Bell's flowers she had planted was beginning to show up through the ground, and once in a while she would go out, in old clothes mostly, with maybe a cap and a apern and fuss round with her flowers. She wouldn't never look across at the Wisner house.

Their hired man that taken care of their dog was the one that taken care of their flowers, same as she did of ours. One morning it seems like, not noticing each other, they was working along kind of close to the fence, not far apart from each other, and all at once he stands up and sees her.

"Good morning!" says he, which Bonnie Bell couldn't help.

She looks up and sees him standing there, with his hat in his hand, respectful enough; and, since he was only one of their hired people, her not feeling any way but friendly to anybody on earth that is halfway decent to her, she says:

"Good morning! I see you're fixing your flowers too."

"Yes," says he; "these crocuses will soon be out. What color is yours?"

"All sorts," says she; "and I do hope they'll all do well."

"I'd be glad to be of any help I could," says he.

"Well, that's kind of you," says she; "you, being a gardener, know more about these things than I do." About then this here collie dog comes up to where he is standing.

"Oh, goodness!" says Bonnie Bell. "Don't let that dog come over in our yard, whatever you do."

All at once he broke out a-laughing.

"I'll take care of him," says he. "I wouldn't take a thousand for that dog. They didn't want to keep him, but I said they'd have to. That was a good fight they had in the house," says he, and laughed again.

Bonnie Bell she got red, and says she:

"I'm awfully sorry. That dog of ours is a terror to fight. We can't break him of it any way. I hope you'll apologize to your people," says she--"that is, if they wouldn't take it wrong of us to have it mentioned. I don't know."

"Oh, no; I guess that'll be all right," says he. "I've been with 'em so long, you see, I can kind of make free about it. If you feel bad about it I'll tell 'em; but it wasn't your fault."

"It would be just like that bunch of yours," says she, "not to let on that they had heard from us that I was sorry. I oughtn't to say it maybe, but----"

"Well now," says the hired man, frank-like enough, "that's just the way I feel. I often tell the old man, myself, that he ain't so much--he come from Iowa once when he didn't have a cent to his name, and yet he puts on more side now than anybody else on the street."

"Did you ever dare to say that to him?" says Bonnie Bell.

"I certainly did, and more than once. I ain't afraid to say anything to either one of 'em," says he. "They don't dare say much to me. I know too much about 'em. But, say now--about that fight," says he. "I want to tell you that new dog we've got is some peach. Give him a year or so and he'll eat up that pup of yours."

"He never seen the day he could and he never will!" says Bonnie Bell. "If you feel that way about it----"

"Well," says he, "our dog is more of a trench fighter. He got under the tables where them old hens was playing bridge and he held out until your pup flanked in on him."

"Did you see the fight?" says Bonnie Bell.

"Sure I did! I was right there."

"Yes?" says she. "In such clothes?"

"Just like I am. I happened to be going past the room where they was holding their party and just then the dogs came in. Believe me, it was more fun than there has been in our house for a good many years. Of course it was some informal."

"Well," says Bonnie Bell, "I can see you must of been in the family a long time or you wouldn't feel the way you do."

"Twenty-odd years," says he, drawing hisself up. "I was taken captive in my early youth, and I have been in servitude ever since, with no hope of getting away," says he. "But a fellow has to make a living somehow and I had only my labor to sell. You see, I know something about flowers, and I can drive a car now some or run a boat."

"We've bought one of those little boats," says Bonnie Bell. "Sometime I'm going to take her out and learn how to run her myself."

"You ought to be careful about this lake," says he. "It gets awful rough sometimes. Still, it's good fun."

You can see they was visiting right and left--just her and the hired man! But, her being so lonesome that way all the time, it seemed like she'd have to talk to somebody, and this man seemed right friendly, though he was only a workingman. Bonnie Bell never was stuck up at all. Maybe he thought she was one of our maids.

"Gardening is all right," says he finally, drawing close to the fence; "but, for me, I'd rather be a cowman than anything I know. I'd rather ride a cowhorse than drive any car on earth. This life here gets on my nerves."

"Don't it?" says she to him. "Sometimes I feel that way myself."

"What anybody finds to like in a city is more than I can see. If I had money I'd buy a ranch," says he, "and then I'd live happy ever after."

Now wasn't that funny, him wanting to do just the very thing we had quit doing and us going to live right alongside of him that way? Still, of course, he was only a hired man--ain't none of 'em contented. I ain't always, myself.

Bonnie Bell thought this was getting too sort of personal and she starts in toward the house--she tells me a good deal of this afterward--but he come up closer to the fence and seemed kind of sorry to have her go; and says he:

"Wait a minute. I was telling you about my ranch. I'm going to have one some day. Do you think I'd live here all my life with the old gentleman and the old lady, and nothing to do but tinkering round flowers and cars? I ain't that trifling."

"I must be going in," says she then.

So she left him. He nearly climbed over the fence to keep her from going, and the last thing she heard him say was:

"I hope I can help you about the flowers." She began to think he was kind of fresh like. She told me what he said.

Her pa seen some of this out of the window and he called her down when she come in.

"I don't think I'd talk much with any of them folks if I was in your place," says he.

"Why, dad," says she, "you don't want me to be stuck up like them, do you?"

Then she told him how Peanut had chased their dog in there and broke up their bridge party. They both had to laugh at that.

"Their gardener, James, told me that Old Man Wisner ain't much, nor the old lady neither," says Bonnie Bell after a while. "It's just what I thought."

"I don't know as he ought to talk that way about the people he works for," says her pa. "I'd be kind of careful about any man that was knocking his boss--wouldn't you, Curly?"

"Well, it was all my fault, dad," says she. "He said good morning; then I ast him about the flowers and he offered to help me with the crocuses."

"Don't take no help from none of that Wisner outfit," says her pa. "You hear me?"

As spring come along and the weather got pleasanter, Bonnie Bell was happier, because she could get out of doors more. Now she took to running this new power boat we had. It was a whizzer. It didn't take her long to learn how to run it. About everybody in Millionaire Row had boathouses on the lake and most of them had these gasoline boats--you could hear them sput-sputting round out there evenings almost any bright day.