an Bonnie Bell Wright.

"Kid, you heard me!" says I. "Go on upstairs now and get your clothes
on. And you don't go out in that boat no more!"

VIII

HOW OLD MAN WRIGHT DONE BUSINESS

As the weather begun to get warmer and we got out-of-doors more, it was
cheerfuller around our place. Bonnie Bell chirked up quite a bit. She
used to sing some. It seemed like she was going to get used to living in
town--not me; never!

But Old Man Wright didn't seem to worry none somehow. He was one of the
sort that, put him down anywheres and he'd be busy at something. If he
was set down on a sand bar beside a creek he'd reach around to find some
sticks; and, first thing you know, he'd be building a house out of
'em--he just always was making things somehow. I never seen a man could
size up a piece of country for what it would perduce better than him.

"Curly," says he to me one day when I was down in his new office and he
was talking about making money, "there's different ways of getting
rich," says he, "but only one system. Either get what a mighty few
thinks they got to have--that's things for rich folks; or else get
something that everybody has got to have whether they want it or
not--that's things for poor folks. And when you're in the game you buy
when things is low and sell when they is high. Nigh about every man you
know plays the game just the other way around. That's why there's so
many poor folks," says he. "Yet the game is plumb easy to beat when you
know how, if making money is all you care about.

"For instance," says he, "when I bought that bunch of stock in the Lake
Electric a while ago it was when nobody wanted it or let on they wanted
it. Since then it has riz round fifteen or twenty points and it'll go
higher. When I sold the Circle Arrow it was when them folks wanted it
right bad. Between you and me, them people paid more for it than it was
worth. I may buy it in some day when they don't want it no more."

"You reckon you ever will, Colonel?" says I, plumb happy to think of
that.

"If I was alone in the world, with just you, I shorely would right off,"
says he, "no matter what it cost. With Bonnie Bell in the game, too, I
don't know what I'll do nor when I'll do it.

"I don't have such a hard time here," he went on after a while. "For
instance, just a few weeks ago I was reading in the papers about this
war in Europe--which is a shame and a awful thing; and I hope it won't
come here, though if it do