"It looks like a awful thing, Colonel, to have a cheeild that's rich and lovely."
"Yes," says he; "and it ain't no joke neither."
"Well now, Colonel," says I, "take the houses in this Row where we live. How many young men is there that we can tally out?"
He shook his head.
"There ain't none at all worth mentioning—believe me!" says he.
I did believe him. That left just Tom for the entry in the Bonnie Bell Stakes. Looked like he couldn't lose.
XX - What Our William Done
Nobody said a word to Bonnie Bell about Tom Kimberly—neither her pa nor me; for she was so quiet and shut up like we couldn't seem to break in noways. We had to let it go like it laid on the board. One thing shore, being in love or not being—whichever it was—had changed Bonnie Bell a heap. She wasn't the same girl no more.
It used to be that Bonnie Bell didn't care so much for her piano as for things out of doors, but now she taken to soaking that pore helpless thing—sometimes sad and lonesome, and then again so hard she'd near bust the keys. Then, maybe after she'd pasted the stuffing out of it a few times, she'd set looking out of the window with her hands in her lap—and so forgetful of her hands that they lay there, little as they was, on their backs, with the fingers turned up on the ends, and even her thumbs. It made me sorry.