Part 31

"Oh, my goodness!" says Katherine after a little. "I must be going home. It isn't far, you know."

"Yes; I know," says Bonnie Bell, quiet.

"And you said you'd take me home in your car?"

"And you want me to?" says Bonnie Bell, kind of funny.

"I wish you would--if you will. Of course I could walk."

"Does your head hurt now?" ast Bonnie Bell.

The girl looked at her straight. Then I knew she was on the square.

"No, it don't," says she; "but I'd like it if you would take me home in your car," says she. "I want you to come in and meet my mommah. We want to come down here if you'll let us, all of us. Will you let us? Will you let us, Bonnie?" says she.

Now, ain't it funny how much can happen quiet and easy? I expect more had happened for Bonnie Bell this last hour or so than had in a whole year before--and all by accident, like most good things comes to us. Not a woman in that block had ever called on Bonnie Bell and it didn't look like they ever would. We wasn't on the map--even me, that ain't got any brains at all, knowed that.

And yet I could tell that if Bonnie Bell Wright drove along the front of that block with Katherine Kimberly in her car, and they got off at the Kimberlys' and went in--and if the Kimberlys come up to our house, too--why, then I knowed we was on the map. I don't think Bonnie Bell cared. What was in her heart was mostly gladness at meeting some girl friend she could talk to right free.

Of course, living there so long, I couldn't help knowing some of the things along the Row. I knowed there was a sort of a fight there as to which was the queen of Millionaire Row, which was the same as being the queen of the society of this here city of Chicago. Either it was this Mrs. Henry D. Kimberly or else it was Mrs. David Abraham Wisner. The Kimberlys was in wholesale leather, while the Wisners was in wholesale beef and pork, and them things. Most everybody in the Row, it seemed to me, had something to do with a cow, one shape or another, except us--which, dealing with cows on the hoof, might of been said to be at the bottom of the whole game. But that ain't respectable, like I told you. Sausage or hides or leather is better--especial if wholesale.

Bonnie Bell was quiet. She taken up the collar of this Katherine girl and looks at the little pin she wore on it.

"What year was yours?" says she.

"Last June," says Katherine.

Then I seen they was both scholars of that same Old Man Smith, where Bonnie Bell had went to school. They had on some sort of pins so they knew each other, like Masons. Not having nothing better to do, they kissed each other again.

By the time Bonnie Bell had drove over to the Kimberlys' house folks had found Katherine's horse, but not her; so her ma was scared silly, natural enough. When she seen her long-lost daughter coming with Bonnie Bell, both of them able to walk and talk, she was right glad, and fell on the necks of both of them, weeping some.

"And who is this young lady," says she, meaning Bonnie Bell, "who has been so kind as to bring you home to your mother?"

And she smiled at Bonnie Bell, her being the second woman to do that in Chicago in two years. You see, if a girl is handsome women mostly hate her; the men don't--which is why.

"This is our neighbor, Miss Wright, mommah," says Katherine. "They live just below us a little way."

She got red in the face then, for everybody on the street there knew about us and the high fence; yet nobody knew us personal. But Katherine's ma was different from most of these other people. Besides, you only needed one good look at Bonnie Bell to see that she wasn't any common folks.

"She left Smith the year before I went in, mommah," says Katherine, "and she's in my sororyety; and she's been here ever since they built their fine house; and she's a dear and I love her." Katherine had a way of talking all in one breath, like a sprinter running a hundred yards flat. "I want you to love her, too," says she to her ma.

And then Old Lady Kimberly she taken Bonnie Bell in her arms and kissed her some more; and the kid, like enough, come near to spilling over then.

"Come right in and have a cup of tea," says she.

So they went into the house, and the Kimberlys' sad man, which was named William, too, brought them some tea. They didn't need it none, because they was full of it already; but women can hold plenty of tea. When they was drinking that and, like enough, all three of them talking at once, Katherine tells her ma all about how she got threw from her horse, and how Bonnie Bell saved her life and carried her home and took care of her, and now brought her back.

"Mommah, their place is lovely," says she. "They've all sorts of nice things and we're going to call as soon as Bonnie Bell will let us."

"Yes, indeed," says her ma, who was going to back any play her girl made.

"Bonnie Bell," says she--"that is a odd name and a very pretty one."

Bonnie Bell laughed at that.