he carbon. But still they had to have carbon. I put a little into a
company that made them things--not much; only a hundred thousand or so.
Since then, what have they done? Why, they've turned in and gave me
eighty per cent stock for nothing, and raised the cash dividend until
I'm making twenty per cent on all I invested and what I didn't invest
too. Such things bores me.

"Then again, there's my rubber business," says he, "rubber tires. The
second day we owned the big car she busts a couple of tires--fifty
dollars or so per each. I begun to figure out how many cars they was
running in this town, up and down the avenue and all over all the other
streets, each one of 'em with four tires on and any one of 'em liable to
bust any minute. I figure the tires runs from fifteen to sixty dollars
apiece and that somebody spends a lot of money for them. Then I went and
bought into a good company that makes them things, a few months ago--not
much; only a couple of hundred thousand or so. But what's the use?" He
sets back and yawns, looking tired.

"I can't help it. I can't find no game in this country that's hard
enough to play for to be interesting. What them rubber-tire people done
was to make me a present of a whole lot of other stock the other day and
raise the dividends. I can't buy into no company at all, it seems like,
'less'n every twenty minutes or so they up and declare another dividend.
I don't like it. I wisht I could find some real man's-size game to play,
because I'm like you--I get lonesome."

Still, he was looking thoughtful.

"Some games we can play," says he. "Then again, seems like there's
others we can't. Now about the kid----"

"She's busy all the time," says I to him. "She reads and paints. Sundays
she goes to church, while you and me only put on a collar that hurts.
Week days she goes down to the picture galleries and into the liberry.
She buys books. She's got her own cars--the big car and the electric
brougham you give her on her birthday last week--ain't a thing in the
world she ain't got. She's plumb happy."

"Except that she ain't!"

"You mean that we don't know nobody--nobody comes in to visit?" He nods.
"Well, why don't we go in and call on them Wisner people that lives next
to us?" says I.

"We can't do that; the rules of the game is that the folks living in a
place first has to make the first call."

"That's a fool rule," says I.

"Shore it is; but Bonnie Bell knows all them rules and she