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,