t, then, was it?" says I. "Well, I didn't think so
then, though I never heard it called to nobody in my life. I made it
plain, though, to that hired man that he didn't have no chance to break
into our house."

"Did he want to come over, Curly?" she ast.

"Crazy to! He wanted to get a look in our ranch room. I told you he was
hankering to be a cowpuncher."

"Well, why didn't you bring him over if he was trying to learn things
you could teach him?"

"What! Me bring him in our place? I reckon not! Now look here, kid,"
says I, "you don't half know how good-looking you are."

"I'm not," says she. "I got a freckle right on my nose. It don't come
off neither."

"Well, maybe one freckle or so," says I; "but that don't kill off your
looks altogether. Let me tell you, when it comes to common people like
him talking your name out in public, why, it don't go!" says I.
"Besides, another thing"--I went on talking to her right plain. "Look at
the money you'll come into sometime! He has got to show me a-plenty what
right he had to say you was wonderfully beautiful. You are, kid--but
what business was it of his?"

"He has been gone four months and eight days," says she, thoughtful.

"How do you know he has? Do you keep a calendar on folks like him?"

"No; I was just thinking," says she, "that if he was here I might ask
him about my sunken garden."

"That would be fine, wouldn't it?" says I. "But then, come to think of
it, he wasn't in favor of that fence hisself. He was right free-spoken;
I'll say that for him."

"He didn't like that fence idea?"

"Of course he didn't. He knew it wasn't right."

"Well," says she, "I'm going to plant ivy on it. If it runs over the top
of the wall and hangs down on their side I'm not going to try to stop
it."

Now, why she said that I never could figure out at all. I suppose women
is peacefuller than men.

The folks in the ward where we live at they allowed their new alderman
was on the square. I reckon it must of been them freckles. There ain't
no way of beating a man in politics that has freckles and that can carry
his liquor. So by and by all the papers come out and begun to say maybe
Mr. John William Wright would be a candidate for treasurer next
election. That is about as high as you can get in city politics.
Treasurers make a heap more than their salaries usual in any large
town. The people don't seem to mind it neither.

Times out on the range wasn't so good now as they might o