gs is, they been used to thinking they own this
whole end of the street. They don't seem to recognize that we're anybody
at all. It's a awful thing and it put Bonnie Bell in wrong. She didn't
know what to do. She was so mad she wouldn't write. So she sends for
Jimmie--I mean James, our chauffore--he's got almost sober lately, it
being three months or so since Christmas, and him knowing a lot about
dogs. So she buys a new dog for them--a large one that you can see easy,
a collie dog; and Jimmie says he paid one-fifty for it."

"A dollar and a half is more than any dog is worth," says I, "especial a
dog that has anything to do with someone like that Wisner woman."

"A dollar and a half!" says he. "A hundred and fifty is what it cost;
this was a swell dog--a young collie about a year old. Well, Bonnie
Bell, she sends it round by James, our chauffore, with her compliments.
Their butler takes it in. I don't know whether it's going to stick or
not. It's a sort of olive branch. You see, Bonnie Bell can't write to no
such people, but she is sorry for killing their dogs and she wants to
make good somehow. I think it was a right good way. It looks like she
could hold her own, and yet like she was willing to meet 'em halfway.

"Well, that's all we can do," says he. "Let it go the way it lays on the
board. I don't like Old Man Wisner a little bit anyhow."

"Well," says I, "if he's running for alderman, why don't you run for
sher'f or something, just to keep occupied?"

"I'm studying my ward," says he. "I don't know very many of the saloon
people yet. You have to be pretty far along to get to be sher'f in a
place like this. But now, a alderman might be easier, if you went at it
right. Anyways, the way they have acted, I feel like I'd copper any game
Old Man Wisner was playing. I kind of feel in my bones that him and me
is going to lock horns, Curly. I don't like the way he acts; and, I tell
you, when I want a neighbor to be friendly with me he's got to be
friendly sometime."

Old Man Wright gets up now and walks around some, kind of grinning.

"But, on the whole, I may find something to keep me busy here in town.
For instance, Old Man Wisner is back of some sort of steal, shore as
you're born, in the Lake Shore Electric Extension that's going on up in
there--the paper says he's been selling it, or the interests has. Why?
He never done a direct thing in his life--that ain't the way he does
business; for that matter, it ain't th