een one awful
fool, me.

"Dave Wisner," says Old Man Wright, "I come acrost to settle things with
you. Our account is some long. You've made it hard for me--awful
hard!--when you made your hired man run off with my girl. Your son! What
kind of talk is this? What do you mean?"

"But he _is_ our son!" says Old Lady Wisner right then, her speaking for
the first time. "In heaven's name, who did you _think_ he was? Hired
man! What do you mean?"

"It's what I been trying to tell you and Curly," says Bonnie Bell now,
holding to her pa's coat with one hand and patting him hard on the
shoulder with the other. "I told you it was all a mistake--everything
was all mixed up. Except for Gawd's mercy sending me here right now,
somebody might of been killed, for all I know," says she. "You men ain't
got no more brains than a rabbit. It's time I come!"

"Your _son_!" says Old Man Wright. "_Son!_ And Curly said he was your
hired man!"

Old Man Wisner laughs right out loud at that.

"Hired man! Oh, I see how you thought that! You maybe seen him pottering
around in the flowers like--he was always dotty about them things--but
no hired man; he wasn't hardly worth a salary."

"And what do you think?" laughs Bonnie Bell at Old Lady Wisner then.
"His mother thought once I was a hired girl!"

Old Lady Wisner for quite a while she'd been playing a sort of
accompaniment, talking to herself. First, she starts in and says: "Oh,
my laws! Oh, my laws sakes! Oh my laws sakes alive!"--over and over
again, she was that scared. And now she begun to say: "Bless my soul!
Gawd bless my soul! Oh, Gawd bless my soul!" And she says that right
over and over again too.

"I told you, Curly," says Bonnie Bell now, "that there'd been a mistake
all around. Why didn't you tell my dad I was here?"

"Well," says I, "I allowed he'd find it out after a while. Ain't he?"

I was sweating awful now and I felt how red my hair was. I toed in so
bad my legs was crossed.

"I've found out a lot of things," says Old Man Wright now, right sudden
and swift. "I been making some mistakes my own self; but you"--and he
faces their hired man now--"you passed yourself off for a servant."

"That's true, sir," says he. "I was under false colors for a long while
and I hated it as much as anyone could. But what could I do? I couldn't
find any way to meet her. I didn't want her money and I didn't want her
to want mine. Well, that's how it happened. I deceived you all, that's
t