ou tried so hard to make me happy!"

"And you ain't happy?" says her pa.

"Dad!" says she. "Dad!" And she went on crying down his neck.

Ain't women hell? I went on away.

XI

US AND THE FREEZE-OUT

More and more folks begun to talk about us and our place since we got to
be alderman. Of course more and more people begun to come in and visit
with us now; but not one from Millionaire Row, though, if I do say it,
we had the best-looking place now in the whole row of houses.

It was one of Bonnie Bell's ideas to make one of them sunken gardens,
which she said was always done in Italy.

"I'll tell you," says she; "we'll build our sunken garden right up
against Old Man Wisner's wall. How would it do to plant a few ivy vines
to run up the side of the wall, dad?" she ast her pa.

"Why, all right," says he; "but you be mighty careful not to plant any
olive branches."

So Bonnie Bell and me we was busy quite a while making plans for this
here sunken garden. We read all the books we could find; still, she
wasn't happy.

"I need some skilled gardener in this," says she; "them Dutch down at
the park are no good at all. I wonder where the Wisners' gardener
went."

"That fellow wasn't so much," says I to Bonnie Bell.

"What makes you say that, Curly?" says she.

"Well, I heard him talking one morning and I didn't like it. For that
matter, I didn't like the way he talked about you neither. I told him we
couldn't have nothing to do with the lower classes--let alone now, when
we're alderman, we couldn't do that. He was fired and he ought to of
been."

"How did you come to know all this, Curly?" says she.

"I heard him down at the boathouse talking to Old Lady Wisner. I think
we're mighty well shut of the whole bunch of them--though I will say he
was learning to rope all right, and I could of made a cowhand out of him
if I'd had time."

"What did she say, Curly?" she asked me then, "Did she really talk about
us?"

"Yes, she did. She thought you was a hired girl. And she says we was
can-nye, and he wasn't to mix with us. Can-nye--what is can-nye,
Bonnie?" says I.

She got red in the face and was shore mad at something.

"Can-nye, eh!" says she. "Can-nye! So that's what she thinks we are."

"Well, that was before we was alderman," says I. "Maybe they think
different now, whatever can-nye is. What is it, anyway?"

"It means something common, vulgar and low down, Curly," says she.

"That wasn't no bouque