"Well," says he at length, "maybe that's about it; yes."
I got up and went out of the room. I wouldn't talk to him no more. He wasn't noways consistent with hisself and every time I talked with him it got harder for me to hold down my job.
But, anyhow, Tom come over that night. He wouldn't go in the ranch room; but he made some sort of a talk about music, one thing or another, and he toled Bonnie Bell out into the music room. But she didn't play and he didn't. From there they must of went out into our flower house, which is called the conswervatory. I didn't hear anything then for a long time. Old Man Wright he goes off to bed at last, pleasant as if he'd ate all the canaries in the shop. Me, I wasn't so shore.
It wasn't right for me to think of them young people, I reckon; but I set there restless, knowing what was going on and how much it meant, and all the time wondering just what them two young folks was talking about. It made me feel sort of dreamy, too, and I begun to figure on this whole damn question of girls and young men. I begun to see that what Old Man Wright and me had worked for all our lives was just this one hour or so in our conswervatory. It was for her—that was all. If she chose right now she'd be happy, and so would we. But if she didn't, what was the use of all her pa's money and all her pa's work?
What chance for happiness would there be in this world for him if she wasn't happy? He loved the girl from the top of her head to her feet, like he'd loved her ma. He was wrapped up in her. If things didn't come right it was going to be mighty hard for him. He'd never get over anything that meant the unhappiness of Bonnie Bell.
So what Tom was doing in our conswervatory around ten or eleven o'clock was settling the happiness of Bonnie Bell and her pa—and me, if you can say I counted.
"Well," says I to myself at last, "this is the way the game is played in the cities. The girl's got to figure on heaps of things that don't bother so much in Wyoming. It ain't the same as if Bonnie Bell was pore and he was pore too. It's a good match—if any match can be good enough for her. She'll forget."
I could just almost see her standing there all in her pale-blue silk and little pale-blue slippers, with her hair done up in a band, like she was when she come down the stair that night, smiling but still ca'm, when she knew Tom was coming. I could see her—— Aw, shucks! What's a cowpuncher got to do with things like that? I wisht I was out on the range, where I belonged.
I set there I don't know how long—maybe I went to sleep once or twice—when I heard the front door close easylike and knew somebody had went out—I didn't know who it was. I waited for a long time after that, but no one come in and no one spoke.
By and by I heard her dress rustle, and she come into our room, where I was setting.