"I don't want to do anything that isn't best for her," says he at last. "I reckon maybe I ain't a good-enough man to marry her. I reckon maybe you're right, sir," says he. Old Man Wright he don't talk no more for a little while. I heard them walk toward the door. "No," says he at length. "Mr. Henderson, I don't reckon we'll say anything about this to Bonnie Bell after all. Good-by, sir. I wish I could ast you to come here often." "Good-by," says he. I seen him go down the walk after a while. He forgot all about his car waiting by the sidewalk and walked half a block before he come to. Of course, he couldn't come to see us no more after that. As for me, I didn't have no friends either. Jimmie the hired man was about the only friend around there I cared much for, and now he was gone--fired, I supposed. Times got even lonesomer than ever. Bonnie Bell come in the room where I was setting one day, and she set down on the lounge and put her chin in her hand and taken a look out the window. I ast her what was up. "Well," says she, "I was just wondering about the seeds for them big flower beds we've been making," says she. "I'll be wanting to plant them next spring, at least. If I had some experienced man that knew about flowers now--" "Why don't you go down to the park," says I, "and talk to some of them Dutch gardeners that raises the flower beds down there? They'll know all about them things," says I. "Curly," says she, "you're only a cowpuncher, ain't you?" "That's all," says I. "Well, that accounts for you not having no sense at all," says she. X US BEING ALDERMAN Really, that fence must of hurt the Wisners as bad as it done anybody else. Us having plenty of ground, our house wasn't built so close to the line as theirs was. The fence must of cut off more light for them than it did for us. Besides, when you looked at it from the street, unless you lived around there and knowed about it, you'd of thought it was us built that fence to spite them and not them to spite us. Old Man Wright was running on what they called the Independent ticket that fall; there was three parties and the town was all tore up. Of course everybody knows there oughtn't to be but just two parties--Republicans and Democrats. Me being from Texas, original, I don't see why anybody should be anything but a Democrat; but Old Man Wright he had a way of picking out things. Well, they held the election along in November. I might of knowed how it would come out. They ain't done counting all the Wright votes yet over in that ward of ours. At about half past six they'd had time enough to count all the sufferedges that Old Man Wisner taken down in the silk-stocking part of that ward. At about half past three in the afternoon the papers come out with bulletins and says the ward was "conceded to Wright." I should say it was conceded! I conceded it, anyways, as soon as I knowed he wanted to run.