"I don't think I'd talk much with any of them folks if I was in your place," says he.
"Why, dad," says she, "you don't want me to be stuck up like them, do you?"
Then she told him how Peanut had chased their dog in there and broke up their bridge party. They both had to laugh at that.
"Their gardener, James, told me that Old Man Wisner ain't much, nor the old lady neither," says Bonnie Bell after a while. "It's just what I thought."
"I don't know as he ought to talk that way about the people he works for," says her pa. "I'd be kind of careful about any man that was knocking his boss—wouldn't you, Curly?"
"Well, it was all my fault, dad," says she. "He said good morning; then I ast him about the flowers and he offered to help me with the crocuses."
"Don't take no help from none of that Wisner outfit," says her pa. "You hear me?"
As spring come along and the weather got pleasanter, Bonnie Bell was happier, because she could get out of doors more. Now she took to running this new power boat we had. It was a whizzer. It didn't take her long to learn how to run it. About everybody in Millionaire Row had boathouses on the lake and most of them had these gasoline boats—you could hear them sput-sputting round out there evenings almost any bright day.
Her pa didn't like her to go out on the lake very much; being from Wyoming he was scared of water—especial so much of it. He tells Bonnie Bell to be careful and, if she must go out on the lake, to only go when it was smooth.
In one way there wasn't no need to be scared about the girl, for she could swim like a duck—Old Man Smith taught all of 'em that. Nearly every morning she would go out in her bathing suit down our walk and through our garridge, and across the dock, and dive into that water where it was more than forty feet deep and as cold as ice. She wasn't afraid. She would come back wet and laughing, and say she liked it. I wouldn't have done that for a farm. I don't believe in going into water unless you have to ford.