Part 51

"Uh-huh!" says he. "But I'm right cheerful; and I don't feel my neck giving none yet," says he; and he rubs his hand up and down it.

"Has Tom Kimberly been here lately?" the old man ast me, real suddenlike, right soon after that, though I hadn't said nothing to him.

"He was here this afternoon," says I. "He ast after Miss Bonnie. She says she was sick, had a cold, and couldn't see no one."

"I'll give Tom sixty days for to propose to Bonnie Bell," says he. "If he don't, then I'll have to. It don't stand to reason that girl's going to have a bad cold that's going to last for sixty days; so she'll be home sometimes when he comes over. I know how his ma and pa feel about it, and I know how I feel too. Maybe we can get Tom to part his hair after a while, or take up some manly habit like chawing tobacco instead of touching the light guitar. Just to take a look at him, I'd say he shaved with one of them little razors like a hoe. For all I know, he may wear garters. Still, time alters many things.

"He's marrying into crowned heads when he comes into our family," says he, going on, "because I'm alderman here, and if my freckles lasts I'm liable to keep on being alderman. Sometimes I wisht I'd put in the papers that I was clean broke and depended on the savings which a faithful old servitor--that's you, Curly--had brung me in my time of need. But I'm afraid it's too late for that now, though the time to test them things is before the wedding obsequies and not after."

"Colonel," says I, "suppose a young man would of come along that didn't have no family back of him, nor no money, but parted his hair, and shaved with a real razor, and wore no garters, and et tobacco, and was right husky looking--what would you think?"

"I'd think the millennium had came, here in Chicago," says Old Man Wright. "I won't deny, Curly, if I had found a young man that could ride setting down, and chawed tobacco, I wouldn't needed to of thought about him twice--always provided he played a wide-open game and acted like he knew what he wanted."

"We don't seem to get together none," says I, despondent.

"Get together!" says he. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing," says I.

XXII

ME AND THEIR LINE FENCE

I had to own it up to myself--I'd lost my nerve. I tried more'n fifteen times to come out and tell Old Man Wright about them Peanut letters from their hired man to Bonnie Bell, and I couldn't--I would see her face every time come in between him and me.

I kept my eyes on that hole in the fence. I was setting there fixing up the bricks, ready to put them in, when I heard some one talking on the other side of the fence. You couldn't see nobody through the fence, no more'n if they was a thousand miles away; but you could hear 'em talk, all right, there, through the hole. I could tell who one of 'em was--it was the voice of Old Lady Wisner. She had the sort of a voice a woman has who has got a nose like a eagle. But I couldn't tell who she was talking to, for nobody seemed to answer much at first.

"James," says she--"James, what are you doing there?"

No one answered, but I felt sure now she was talking to their gardener. So he was home!

"Who made that hole? Who has done this, James?" says she again. "Who made that hole in the wall?"

Still, he didn't answer none; and she went on:

"I see! It must of been some of them awful Wrights that live acrost there. How dare they break through our fence? I'll have them sued!"

"Oh, no, you won't. It was done from this side--I can tell you that."

I knew his voice. It was him.

"Whoever did it," he went on, "I'm going to close it up. I saw their dog in our yard the other day. Did you see him in here today?"

"No--that same awful little cur?" says she. "They are the worst people, James! I certainly am glad you want nothing to do with them, even their dog. But, of course, you couldn't."

"No; it seemed not," says he.

"What do you mean?" says she, harshlike. "As for that maid of theirs, I was inexpressibly shocked, James, when I found that you so far forgot yourself--"

"I wouldn't say any more," says he.

"I shall say all I like, and you'll please remember who you are! The David Wisners can't afford to have it understood that they associate any way whatsoever with the Wright family. Not even our servants can visit acrost. I've been suspecting for some time."

"Well, that's plain enough," says he. "I don't see any use trying to make it any plainer. There's no use rubbing it in."