a million, I'll betcha."

"Well, that's a heap more money than anybody ought to pay for a place to
live in," says I. "They ought to spend it for cows."

"But it fronts the lake," says she, "and it's right in with the best
people."

"Is that so?" says I. "Then here is where we ought to of come--some
place like that; for what we're here for is to break in with the best
people. Ain't that the truth, Bonnie Bell?"

"Maybe," says she after a while--"bankers, I suppose, merchants,
wholesale people--hides, leather, packing----"

"And not cowmen?" says I.

"Certainly not!" says she. "To be the best people you must deal in
something that somebody else has worked on--you must handle a
manufactured product of some kind. You mustn't be a producer of actual
wealth."

"Sho! Bonnie Bell," says I, "if you're in earnest you're talking
something you learned at Old Man Smith's college. I don't know nothing
about them things. Folks is folks, ain't they? A square man is a square
man, no matter what's his business."

"It's different here," says she.

"Well, now, while we're speaking about houses," says I, us setting there
on our horses all the time and plenty of people going by and looking at
us--or leastways looking at her--"why don't you tell me where your house
is going to be at? You never did show it to me once."

"I'm not going to, Curly," says she. "That's going to be a secret. Of
course dad knows where it is; but as for you--well, maybe we will get
into it by Christmas."

"Now, for instance," says I--and I waves my hand toward a place that was
just starting alongside this big house we'd been looking at--"it like
enough taken a year or so to get this here place as far along as it is."

"Uh-huh!" says she.

So then we turned away and rid back home. When we got back to the hotel
we found Old Man Wright setting in a chair, with his legs stuck out and
his hands in his pockets, looking plumb unhappy.

"What's the matter, dad?" ast Bonnie Bell. "Have you lost any money or
heard any bad news?"

"No, I ain't," says he. "It all depends on what people need to make them
happy."

"Well," says Bonnie Bell--her face was right red from the ride we had
and she was feeling fine--"I'm perfectly happy, except there ain't any
place you can ride a horse in this town and have any fun at it, the
roads are so hard. Everybody seems to go in motor cars nowadays,
anyways."

"Huh!" says her pa. "That's what I should think." He holds up a
n