Bonnie Bell walks across the sidewalk now, under the awning, with her
muff up against her face, bending over against the storm. She looks up,
after she has said good-by to Mr. Henderson, who run out with us,
laughing and saying "Merry Christmas!"--she just looks up at the man on
the seat, and says she: "Home, James!"
I reckon the man must of been new that she had hired. He looks round at
first, as if he was trying to read our brand. Then all at once, sudden,
he jumps down offen the seat, touches his cap and opens the door.
We all got in and said good-by to the hotel where we'd been living so
long. The chauffore touches his hat again, shuts the door and climbs
back in his seat. He turned that long car round in one motion in the
street. The next minute we was out on the avenue, away from the hotel,
and right in the middle of that row of lights several miles long, where
the bullyvard is at, along the lake there. He turns her north on the
bullyvard, without a skip or a bobble, and she runs smooth as grease. I
seen Bonnie Bell was certainly a good judge of a car, like she was of a
horse or anything else.
"Daughter," says Old Man Wright to her after a time--and he didn't usual
call her that--"you're a wonder to your dad tonight! Where did you get
it? Where did you learn it?"
She looks up at him quick from her muff, plumb serious, and just put out
her hand on his, in its white glove.
We moved right along up the avenue, along a little crooked street or so,
round a corner and over the bridge; and then we come out where the
lights was in a long row again, and we could hear the roar of the lake
right close to the road.
"Where are you taking us, kid?" says I after a while, seeing that her pa
wasn't going to say nothing, nohow.
She only smiled.
"Wait, Curly; you'll see the new ranch house before so very long."
By and by we was right at the lower end of that long row of big houses
that cost so much money, where the best people live--Millionaire Row,
they called it then.
I knew where we was. After a while we come right to the place where
Bonnie Bell and me once had set on our horses and looked out at a new
house that wasn't finished, but was just beginning. It was done now--all
complete, from top to bottom, right where the foundations had been last
spring! I could see where the walks was laid out and some trees had been
planted that fall--big ones, as though they had always growed there.
Here and there was statues, women mostly and looking cold that night.
On behind you could see the line of the low buildings, like the outlying
barns of the home ranch on the Yellow Bull; but this house stood there
just inside, where the lake come in rolling and roaring, and fronted
right on this avenue, where our best people lived. It was stone, three
stories or more, maybe, with a place for buckboards to drive under and a
stone porch over the front door, and a walk and steps. And it was all
lit up from top to bottom; all the windows was bright.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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