"That's what I don't know. For some man that will make Bonnie Bell happy. But all the young men in a city talk alike and look alike and dress alike. I ain't seen more than one or two that was worth a cuss--not a one I thought was good enough for my girl. And yet it stands to reason that something will happen; and it might be any time. It makes me uneasy." I couldn't see why more folks didn't come into our house, like they used to out on the Circle Arrow; and I said that. "It's easy to see why they don't," says Old Man Wright, and he busts the glass top of his table with his fist. "It's plumb plain to see why. It's them Wisners has blocked our game. They coppered us from the start--that's what! We got in wrong at the start with them; we didn't kotow to them and they've always been expecting it." "That puts us in pretty hard," says I. "It wouldn't be hard for you or me, Curly," says he. "There ain't a game on earth that that pie-faced old hypocrite can play that I can't beat him at; I don't fear him no more than I like him. But when I see how easy it was for him and his folks to make my girl miserable---- It ain't on account of myself, Curly," says he, and he sweeps his hand over the desk and knocks every paper and everything else on the floor. "She's all I got," says he. "I loved her ma and I love her. Whatever goes against her happiness goes against me all the way through. And," says he, "I'll buck this here city game until some day I bust the bank!" I left him setting there, sort of looking down at his feet, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out. He wasn't happy none at all, though all the time he'd been hollering for some game that he couldn't beat. IX US AND THEIR FENCE We went on thataway a good while into the summer and nothing much happened between us and our neighbors. Maybe once in a while our dog Peanut would get over in their back yard and scratch up their pansies. Peanut always liked to lay in fresh dirt, and he seemed to know instinctive which was our pansy beds and which was theirn. Their hired man only laughed when I seen him and apologized. He used to come over once in a while, their hired man did, and meet me on the dock back of the boathouse, where I give him lessons in roping. I showed him a few things--how to let go when he got his rope straight, and to give hisself plenty of double back of the hondoo. We used to rope the snubbing posts where we tied the boats. Sometimes we'd practice for a hour or so and he begun to get on right well. We visited that way several days, usual of mornings. "Don't the lady ever come down to the boats no more?" says he one time. "No," says I. "Her pa's afraid she'll get drownded." "Does she ever talk about saving the life of anybody?" he ast. "No," I says; "she's used to such things. She don't take no account anyways of saving the life of a laboring man," says I. "It's nothing to her."