Now for reasons of my own, not wanting to rile Old Man Wright, I didn't say nothing to him about this hole in the fence. Neither did I say anything to Bonnie Bell about the hired man having came back; because she was doing right well the last day or so, brighter and more cheerful than she had been. That, of course, was because of what Katherine'd told her about her brother Tom. Any girl likes to hear about a young man coming around, of course. Far as any of us could tell, Tom Kimberly might be all right. Bonnie Bell now, all at once, she taken to wanting to go on the lake with her boat, and she insists our chauffore and her and me must go down and fix up the boat. We didn't none of us like it especial, but she said she hadn't been on the lake for so long she wanted to go once more before it got too cold. I didn't know nothing about boats, but sometimes I'd go down to the boathouse and watch Bonnie Bell while she was tinkering with the engine or something. One day I went down to the boathouse about the middle of the afternoon, expecting to meet her out on the dock. All at once I hear voices out there, one of them hers. I stopped then, wondering who could of got on our dock. There wasn't no way from the Wisners' yard to get on our dock now, because the door into their boathouse had been nailed up. The wall run clear down to their garridge, and their garridge faced onto the boathouse, which was lower down. The only way anybody could get on our dock from their place was to get in a boat and come round from the lake. Then it would of been easy. I said I heard Bonnie Bell's voice. She was talking; who she was talking to, I didn't know. "It's all wrong!" says she. "You are presuming too much. Of course I pulled you out of the lake--I would anybody; but your employers are not friends of ours. Even if they were you've no right in the world to speak to me." Then I heard another voice. I knew it was Jimmie, their hired man. He spoke out and I heard him plain. "I know I haven't," says he, "none in the world; but I've got to." "You must not!" says she. "Go away!" "I'll not," says he. "I can't help it! I tell you I can't help it." Me being foreman, I reached around now to get hold of a brick or something. I couldn't help hearing what they said. He'd been ordered off; yet here he was talking to Bonnie! XV THE COMMANDMENT THAT WAS BROKE I stood close up to the boathouse door and was going to step out, but what the hired man was saying to Bonnie Bell was so nervy I had to stop. Besides, I wanted to hear what she'd say to show him his place. "From the first minute I saw you," says he, "I couldn't help it. I swore then I'd meet you some day, and sometime----" "Is this the way?" I heard her say, low. "It's the only way I have," says he. "If there was a better, don't you think I'd take it? But what chance did I have? I had to make some way; I wouldn't of been any sort of man if I hadn't."