n't that about it?"

"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
cow