itude ever since, with no hope of
getting away," says he. "But a fellow has to make a living somehow and I
had only my labor to sell. You see, I know something about flowers, and
I can drive a car now some or run a boat."

"We've bought one of those little boats," says Bonnie Bell. "Sometime
I'm going to take her out and learn how to run her myself."

"You ought to be careful about this lake," says he. "It gets awful rough
sometimes. Still, it's good fun."

You can see they was visiting right and left--just her and the hired
man! But, her being so lonesome that way all the time, it seemed like
she'd have to talk to somebody, and this man seemed right friendly,
though he was only a workingman. Bonnie Bell never was stuck up at all.
Maybe he thought she was one of our maids.

"Gardening is all right," says he finally, drawing close to the fence;
"but, for me, I'd rather be a cowman than anything I know. I'd rather
ride a cowhorse than drive any car on earth. This life here gets on my
nerves."

"Don't it?" says she to him. "Sometimes I feel that way myself."

"What anybody finds to like in a city is more than I can see. If I had
money I'd buy a ranch," says he, "and then I'd live happy ever after."

Now wasn't that funny, him wanting to do just the very thing we had quit
doing and us going to live right alongside of him that way? Still, of
course, he was only a hired man--ain't none of 'em contented. I ain't
always, myself.

Bonnie Bell thought this was getting too sort of personal and she starts
in toward the house--she tells me a good deal of this afterward--but he
come up closer to the fence and seemed kind of sorry to have her go; and
says he:

"Wait a minute. I was telling you about my ranch. I'm going to have one
some day. Do you think I'd live here all my life with the old gentleman
and the old lady, and nothing to do but tinkering round flowers and
cars? I ain't that trifling."

"I must be going in," says she then.

So she left him. He nearly climbed over the fence to keep her from
going, and the last thing she heard him say was:

"I hope I can help you about the flowers." She began to think he was
kind of fresh like. She told me what he said.

Her pa seen some of this out of the window and he called her down when
she come in.

"I don't think I'd talk much with any of them folks if I was in your
place," says he.

"Why, dad," says she, "you don't want me to be stuck up like them, do
you?"

Then