what makes you
ask? The other kind of young man you're talking about ain't showed up
yet. Besides, one thing that favors Tom is he don't have to marry for
money. Bless you; he ain't thinking of her money--not one dollar; just
thinking of her, right the way she is. He's gone--that's what he is."

"That's so," says I; "that's certainly so. But how about her?"

"They all take their chances," says Old Man Wright, solemn, after a
while. "Anyway you can fix it a woman takes a chance. She's in a gamble
all her whole born life. She's a gamble herself and she has to play in
a gamble from the time she begins to toddle till the time they fold her
hands. She can't tell if her husband's going to stick; she can't tell if
her husband's going to make good; she can't tell how her kids is going
to turn out--that's all a gamble too.

"Do your best, Curly, and try your damnedest, there ain't no way you can
protect no woman against them gambles. If I wait for exactly the right
man to come along, that don't comb his hair back, how do I know he'll
ever come? If he does come maybe he'll have a eye on her bank roll, or
maybe he'll measure forty inches around his pants. Either one--ary
one--it's all a gamble for a girl.

"No," he went on; "about the only thing she can do, after all, is to use
her own head and her own heart. It ain't in the nature of things that
you can look ahead and see how the game's coming out for any girl--she
has to take her chances. We've got to stand by and see her do it. I
wisht it wasn't so. I loved her ma so much, and she looks so much like
her ma--why, I wisht--why, I wisht---- Damn it, don't I wisht it wasn't
such a dash-blamed, all-fired, hell-for-certain gamble for the kid!"

It wasn't no time for me to say anything about any hired man now! By and
by the old man quit looking into the fire and got up and went off to
bed.

XIX

THEM AND BONNIE BELL

It was a right fine place for me--probably not. Here I was, foreman
under full pay, and bound to play on the level with the boss, to say
nothing of the long time I'd worked for him. Of course I ought to tell
him all about that Wisners' hired man; but how could I?

It come to a question whether I liked the boss best or Bonnie Bell,
which is no fair place to put a man. Any man is apt to want to favor the
woman in a case like that. Come to get down to cases, I found I liked
Bonnie Bell a lot more than I ever'd realized I did. I was part her dad,
you know,