Part 24

"Well, it's no matter what you were doing over there," says she vicious. "You're not to have nothing more to do with such can-nye no more. Why can't you attend to your own business?"

"I'm just going to," says he. "You ain't ast my consent about mussing up my flower beds. What's all that rock and brick doing up in the yard?" Say, he was a sassy one!

"Since you ast me, I'll tell you. It's a fence we're going to build."

"A fence?" says he. "We got a perfectly good fence now."

"Oh, have we? Well, it ain't high enough to keep out our people from mixing with them can-nye." I wondered again what can-nye was. "I'll not have you talking with their maids."

"Is that so?" says he. "I hadn't noticed much of that going on lately," says he. "I wish it was."

"James!" says she, so mad she couldn't hardly speak. "James!" And about all she could do was to guggle in her throat and say: "James!"

"Well," says I to myself, "here's where he gets the can tied to him, all right. It don't stand to reason she'll allow that kind of talk."

Well now, they was talking about that fence. In two or three days it was easy enough to see what the Wisners was going to do: They was going to cut out the herd law and fence in their own range.

It wasn't a fence at all. It was a wall they built, day after day--a regular wall! Pretty soon it was up as high as our second-story window, and it keep on a-going. It took them weeks to finish it. When it was done it run clean from the sidewalk back to their boathouse. From our side, on the ground, you couldn't only see the top of their house, and from their side you couldn't only see the top of ours.

Well, anyway, the wall went up and we didn't stop it, because we couldn't. It was like we was living in two different worlds, with that wall between us, and that was the way they meant it. Nothing could cross from one side to the other. It was the coldest deal I ever seen one set of folks give another. And why? I couldn't figure why.

Bonnie Bell was right still and quiet. Old Man Wright he went around thoughtful for quite a while. He seen this was a insult put on him, but he didn't know what to do. At last he goes to Bonnie Bell one day, and says he:

"Sis, it's coming along kind of hot in the summer. How'd you like to go to White Sulphur or somewheres for a few months?" says he. "You're looking kind of pale now for the last few weeks," says he, "and I don't like to see it."

She turns and looks at him square in the eyes for a minute, and pointed out the window.

"With that thing going on?" says she. "I'll see them damned first!" says she.

That was the first time I ever heard Bonnie Bell cuss. I liked her for saying it, and so did her pa.

"It's a hard game we got to play, sis," says he; "but we'll play it."

She nods, and we let it go at that.

That fence ruined the street, as far as our end of it was concerned. Them that lived north of it could look on up the lake for quite a ways, but for more than a quarter of a mile down toward the park there couldn't nobody see down that part of the street at all. The papers got to talking about it, and some complaints was printed too. Old Man Wright he only sort of laughed. The papers made fun of the Wisners for building that fence--sort of treating the whole thing like a joke.

About now the campaign for alderman got busier. Old Man Wright printed a full page in all the papers, with a picture of hisself, and saying that J. W. Wright was running for alderman in that ward. Right opposite his full-page ad was about six or eight inches, with a smaller picture of Old Man Wisner with it; and he said that Mr. David Abraham Wisner begged to submit his name as a candidate for the sufferedges for alderman in that ward. I didn't know what sufferedges was at first, but I knew what my boss was out after--it was votes, and he was liable to get 'em.

From that time on the boss was busier than he had been before. He got better acquainted over on the west side of our ward. Sometimes he wouldn't get back till midnight, but he always come home under his own steam. In his office I saw all sorts of people. He seemed to take to this alderman business natural.

Anyways he was a hard man to buck in any kind of a game. He had his own idea all the time maybe about that fence in Millionaire Row. One day he taken a little pasear down the lake front toward the head of the park, where there was some vacant land below us. He was sizing things up. Two or three weeks after he told me he'd bought that tract--the whole works, clear down to the end of the park. I don't know what he paid for it, but it must have been a lot of money.

"You see," says he, "all them people up there north of us on the row they ain't got only a little bit of land for their houses. Me, I'm going to have a place with half a mile or so of ground to it. Bonnie Bell has got to have a place to herself for to raise crocuses and other flowers," says he, "and to cultivate her Boston dog."

It was kind of hard times right then and a good many men was out of work. Old Man Wright put a lot of 'em to work on his new Bonnie Bell Addition, as he called it. He dug it up and smoothed it down and laid it out, and planted it with trees and sodded it. And then, down at the far end of it, he just puts up a high wall like the Wisners', but 'way off from it. Then we dug down along the Wisner wall.

Folks used to go along and wonder what it was done for and who done it. And later on some folks farther up the drive allowed it was some kind of a new Italian garden and some of them begun to put up them walls too. It got right fashionable. The whole looks of that part of town was changed. But, while they had little bits of yards you couldn't swing a cat in, we had land enough to start a hay ranch if we had of wanted to.

"I can afford it," says Old Man Wright.

And by the time he had the improvements started the real-estate men come and pestered him to take at least three times as much money as he give for it.

"I may sell it sometime," says he, "but not now," says he. "I like it. My girl likes to raise crocuses, and what she likes she gets. We're going to raise plenty of crocuses and tulips and hollyhocks," says he.