Part 17

"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."