"No, I ain't," says he. "It all depends on what people need to make them happy."
"Well," says Bonnie Bell—her face was right red from the ride we had and she was feeling fine—"I'm perfectly happy, except there ain't any place you can ride a horse in this town and have any fun at it, the roads are so hard. Everybody seems to go in motor cars nowadays, anyways."
"Huh!" says her pa. "That's what I should think." He holds up a newspaper in front of him. "When I first come here," says he, "I seen that everybody was riding in cars, and I figured that more of them was going to; so I taken a flyer, sixty thousand dollars or so, in some stock in a company that was making one of them cars that sells right cheap. Now them people have gave me eighty per cent stock for a bonus and raised the dividend to twenty-five per cent a year. She's going to make money all right. Shouldn't wonder if that stock would more than double in a year or so."
"For heaven's sake, Colonel," says I, "ain't there nothing a-tall that you can get into without making money?" says I.
"No, there ain't," says he, sad. "It happens that way with some folks—I just can't help making it; yet here I am with more money than any of us ought to have. But I had to do it," says he to Bonnie Bell. "I get sort of lonesome, not having much to do; so that I have to mix up with something. Cars, sis?" says he. "Why, let me give you two or three of the kind our company makes."
"No you don't!" says Bonnie Bell. "I want one that——"
"Huh! that costs about eight or ten thousand dollars, maybe?"
"Well," says she, "you have to sort of play things proportionate, dad; and I think that kind of a car is just about proportionate to what you and me is going to do in this little town when we get started."
She turns and looks out the window some more. That was a way she had. You see, all these months we'd been there already we didn't know a soul in that town. Womenfolks always hate each other, but they hate theirselves when other womenfolks don't pay no attention to them. Bonnie Bell was used to neighbors and she didn't have none here; so, though she was busy buying everything a girl couldn't possibly want, she didn't seem none too happy now.
"What's wrong, sis?" says her pa after a while, pulling her over on his knee. "Ain't me and Curly treating you all right?"