I seen his arm go around on her bare shoulders easylike—he didn't hardly touch her for fear she'd break; and he didn't say a word. He was that sort of man that almost any sort of woman would like to put her arms around his neck and lay her head on him if she was in trouble.
"What is it, Honey?" says he at last.
"Why, nothing, dad," says she. "I love you—that's all. You believe it, don't you?"
"Will you always, sis?" says he, sort of funny.
"Always," says she, quiet. "Now," says she, "run off and get dressed up. Have you forgotten that the Kimberlys are coming for dinner tonight with us? Curly, you must go get on some dark clothes, you know."
You see, I was one of the family. I maybe gave them plenty of trouble, but they never'd let me eat anywheres but with them all the time. By this time I'd learned quite a few things from Bonnie Bell—about how not to put a napkin up too high, or to break my bread up into little pieces and pile them up, or to pour out my coffee, or to use the same spoon for coffee and other vittles, or to sidle up my plate for the last drop of soup there was in it—oh, several tricks like that; though I knew the game was a heap complicated and I hadn't learned it all yet.
She looks at me when I went out the door and I shook my head to show I hadn't said nothing. She set down, all in her silk and her shining rings and things, right on our old hide lounge; and she was looking at our painting of the Yellow Bull Valley and the old ranch house. I left her there, all in her diamonds, her hair tied up high—about the richest girl in Chicago and, like enough, the miserablest right then. But she didn't have nothing on me at that.
When we come back, all fixed up the best we could, she was still setting there. She was pretty—Lord, how pretty!—but sad.
She gets up now and begins to laugh and talk right fast to the old man, and by and by, before anything broke, Old Man Kimberly and Old Lady Kimberly drifted in.
"The young folks'll be over before long," says he; "we didn't wait for 'em, because I just wanted a taste of the old bourbon that I find here and can't find anywheres else. Where did you get it, Colonel?" says he.