Old Man Wright reaches out his arm and pushes him to one side, and him and me go on in, walking fast toward the middle of the house.
XXX - How It Come Out After All
There was a curtain acrost the door between the hall and the room beyond. Old Man Wright made one sweep and throwed open the whole room before us. We stood there in the door, neither of us making any move. Everything stopped then. There wasn't nobody talking no more. What we seen before us was something you couldn't hardly of figured on seeing at all.
They was all setting at the dinner table and they was all dressed up. There was Old Man Wisner and the old lady, and Bonnie Bell—she was setting next to the old lady. Just beyond, and square acrost the table from us, facing us, was the hired man—the man on whose account we'd come to square things now and leave them signed, sealed and delivered.
I thought it was right funny for their hired man to be eating with them, and him all dressed up just like them. Then I remembered how fresh he'd always been and how he'd bragged about the pull he had with them people. And I remembered the talk I'd heard between him and Old Lady Wisner too. Anyways, there he was setting, big as life; and if they was having any trouble over anything you couldn't see it. No one was shedding no tears and there didn't seem to be no war going on.
I felt like I was up in the air. I felt like I'd been dreaming about something and hadn't woke up. I couldn't figure out what it was I seen. No one spoke a word.
You must remember that Old Man Wright didn't know yet Bonnie Bell was anywhere within three thousand miles of him. And when he pulled aside the curtain there she was, setting right at their table! And right acrost was a young man setting, too—a young man who he don't know none.
You see, he never had saw that hired man at all, so as to know him. I hadn't told the old man about Bonnie Bell being there, because I allowed he'd find it out anyways. Now he had.
It was Bonnie Bell that moved first—for she knew what might happen. She made one jump for her pa and threw her arms round him—not around his neck, but down around his arms. She didn't try to kiss him—she didn't say a word; she was scared. She knowed where he carried his gun—up under his shoulder. I never knowed whether she found it or not.