"Have you got one of your butler?" he ast.
"No, we ain't; and you can't get none. We don't bother about the lower classes," says I.
So they laughed and bimeby went on away. I give them some cigarettes—all I had; and they said I was a good scout, like enough.
Well, of all the papers that tried to get a story that morning, not one printed a word except one. It come out with about a colyum in the paper all about a mysterious disappearance in Millionaire Row. It allowed that nobody could tell who had disappeared, but some said that Old Man Wisner had run off with one of Alderman Wright's hired girls, and others said that Old Man Wright had eloped with Mrs. Wisner, while others declared that the Wrights' butler had eloped with the second-floor maid of the Wisner household; though still others insisted the Wisner gardener had disappeared with the heiress of Alderman Wright, the well-known citizen whose re-election at the coming term was practically assured.
That paper printed some pictures too—one of Old Man Wisner and one of Bonnie Bell, allowing that he was our butler and the one of Bonnie Bell was the picture of the second-floor maid of the Wisner household. I reckon they had them pictures already in their newspaper office. But they printed a new picture of the Wisner wall and said some more funny things about that, like they had before.
This wasn't no funny time for us. The next day there was a big fire or something, and all those people got to writing about something else; and they let us alone.
After they'd gone away that morning Old Man Wright ast me if I'd learned anything. Then I told him about how William had made signs that morning across the wall to people in that house.
"Now it seems to me like this, Colonel," says I: "I never went to sleep that night, and neither did Bonnie Bell. When she seen them lights on the windows, maybe she went to her own window. He was maybe standing there and seen her. Maybe she seen him. Maybe all at once it come over her that she'd have to—she'd have to—— Well, you know what I mean."
He nodded then.
"You see, it must of come over the pore girl all at once," says I; for, to save my life, I couldn't help trying to excuse her every way I could. "She hadn't sent no word over to him and he hadn't got no word to her for weeks so far as I knew. It must of all come to them both just in that one minute. It was like cap and powder—you can't help the explosion then. I reckon maybe she's somewhere—with him."