she had. You see, all these months we'd been there already we didn't know a soul in that town. Womenfolks always hate each other, but they hate theirselves when other womenfolks don't pay no attention to them. Bonnie Bell was used to neighbors and she didn't have none here; so, though she was busy buying everything a girl couldn't possibly want, she didn't seem none too happy now.

"What's wrong, sis?" says her pa after a while, pulling her over on his knee. "Ain't me and Curly treating you all right?"

She pushed back his face from her and looks at him; and says she, right sober:

"Dad," she says, "you mustn't ever really ask me that. You're the best man in all the world—and so is Curly."

"No, we ain't," says he. "The best man hasn't really showed yet for you, sis."

"Why, dad," says she, "I'm only a young girl!"

"You're the finest-looking young girl in this town," says he, "and the town knows it."

"Huh!" says she, and sniffs up her nose. "It don't act much like it."

"If I can believe my eyes," says her pa, "when I walk out with you a good many people seem to know it."

"That don't count, dad," says she. "Men, and even women, look at a girl on the street—men at her ankles and women at her clothes; but that doesn't mean anything. That doesn't get you anywhere. That isn't being anybody. That doesn't mean that you are one of the best people."

"And you want to be one of the best people—is that it, sis?"

She set her teeth together and her eyes got bright.

"Well," says she, "we never played anything for pikers, did we, dad?"

Then them two looked each other in the eyes. I looked at them both. To me it seemed there certainly was going to be some doings.

"Go to it, sis!" says her pa. "You've got your own bank account and it's bigger than mine. The limit's the roof.

"Speaking of limits," says he, "reminds me that the president of our bank he got me elected to the National League Club here in town; him having such a pull he done it right soon—proxies, maybe. I've been over there this afternoon trying to enjoy myself. Didn't know anybody on earth. One or two folks finally did allow me to set in a poker game with them when I ast. It wasn't poker, but only a imitation. I won two hundred and fifty dollars and it broke up the game. If a fellow pushes in half a stack of blues over there they all tremble and get pale. This may be a good town for women, but, believe me, sis, it's no town for a real man."

"Well, never mind, dad," says she. "If you get lonesome I'll have you help me on the house. We'll have to get our servants together. For instance, we've got to have a butler—and a good one."

"What's a butler?" says I.

"He stands back of your chair and makes you feel creepy," says Old Man Wright. "We've got to have one of them things, shore. Then there's the chauffore for the car when you get it, and the cook. That's about all, ain't it?"

"That's about the beginning," says Bonnie Bell. "You have to have a cook and a kitchen girl and two first-floor maids and two upper-floor maids and a footman."

"Well, that will help some," says her pa. "I've been bored a good deal and lonesome, but maybe, living with all them folks, somebody will start something sometime. When did you say we could get in?"

"They tell me we'll be lucky if we have everything ready by Christmas," says Bonnie Bell.

"It looks like a merry summer, don't it?" says he sighing.

"And like a hell of a Merry Christmas!" says I.

IV - Us and Christmas Eve

How we spent all that spring and summer I don't hardly see now. We was the lonesomest people you ever seen. Old Man Wright he'd go over to his new club once in a while and sometimes out to the stockyards, and sometimes he'd fuss round at this or that. Bonnie Bell and me we'd go riding once in a while when she wasn't busy, which was most of the time now. She had a lot of talking to do with the folks that was building her house and furnishing it—she never would tell me where it was.

Well, it got cold right early in the winter. It was awful cold, colder than it gets in Wyoming. When it gets cold in Chicago the folks say: "This certainly is most unusual weather!"—just like we do when there is a blizzard out in Wyoming. Old Man Wright and me we thought we'd freeze, because, you see, we had to wear overcoats like they had in the city, and couldn't wear no sheep-lined coats like we would have wore on the range.

"Well, you see," said Bonnie Bell when we complained to her, "when we get our motor car running we won't have to walk. Nobody that amounts to anything walks in the city. Our best people all have cars; so they don't need sheepskin coats. Our car will be here any time now; so we can see more of the city and be more comfortable than you can on horseback. Nobody rides horseback except a few young people in the parks in the summertime—I found that out."

"Don't our best people do that now?" ast her pa.

"Some, but not many," says she. "There's a good many people that wants you to think they're the best people; but they ain't. You can always tell them by the way they play their hands. Most of the people I've seen riding in the parks is that sort—they want you to look at them when they ride because they're perfectly sure they're doing what our best people are doing. You can tell 'em by their clothes, whether they are riding or walking. It's easy to spot them out."

"I wonder," says I, "if they can spot out your pa and me?"

She comes over and rumples up my hair like she sometimes did.

"You're a dear, Curly!" says she.

"I know that," says I; "but don't muss up my new necktie, for I worked about a hour on that this morning, and at that it's a little on one side and some low. But I'm coming on," says I.

Now, Old Man Wright, when he wore his spiketail coat, he had the same trouble with his tie that I had with mine. He told his tailor about that one time, but his tailor told him that the best people wore them that way—mussed up and careless. Natural like it was a hard game to play, because how could you tell when to be careless and when not to be? But, as I said, we was coming on.

Mr. Henderson—he was the hotel manager and a pretty good sport too—he sort of struck up a friendship with Old Man Wright, and you couldn't hardly say we didn't have no visitors, for he come in every once in a while and was right nice to us. You see, what with Old Man Wright wearing his necktie careless and Bonnie Bell dressing exactly like she come out of a fashion paper, if it hadn't been for me our outfit might of got by for being best people, all right. Like enough I queered the game some; but Henderson he didn't seem to mind even me.

The day before Christmas Bonnie Bell said her new house was all done and all furnished, everything in, servants and all, ready for us to move in that very night and spend Christmas Eve there. But she says Mr. Henderson, the manager of the hotel, wanted us to eat our last dinner that night in the hotel before we went home. To oblige him we done so.

He taken us in hisself that night. The man at the door snatched our hats away, but he taken Bonnie Bell's coat—fur-lined it was and cost a couple of thousand dollars—over his arm, and he held back the chair for her. There was flowers on the table a plenty. I reckon he fixed it up. There wasn't no ham shank and greens, but there was everything else.

I shouldn't wonder if some of the best people was there. Everybody had on the kind of clothes they wear in the evening in a town like this—spiketails for the men, and silk things, low, for the womenfolks. Old Man Wright, with his red moustache, a little gray, him tall, but not fat, and his necktie a little mussed up, was just as good-looking a man as was in the place.

As for Bonnie Bell—well, I looked at our girl as I set there in my own best clothes and my necktie tied the best I knew how, and, honest,