Oh, me, am I insinuating that Mother McBirney is not hospitable or that she does not love beauty? If so, shame on me. Her door stands open to every wanderer. It stood open to me. The flowers about her walls, and the purple valley below her hill, delight her. Yes, she is a true lover of beauty. May we never lose sight of each other, and to the last may I feel her hand waiting to grasp mine in whatever darkness she or I may have to walk through. I only say I wish I might, sometimes, have someone like you, my Carin, to talk with. Of course, there is Barbara Summers. But she is in the valley and I on the mountain.
Equally of course, there are Keefe O’Connor’s letters. And there are yours. Be sure you send me one soon.
Do not mind my changing moods. I am, after all, always the same old
P. S. This is the evening of the same day.
Mrs. Kitchell, Hi’s little brown mother, all in new clothes, with white cotton gloves on her hands—the hands that used to be so hard and scratched and battered with work. She had a red rose on her new fall hat, and her shoes were blacked. And you know what shoes are at Lee! The standard is low, owing to red mud and lack of elbow activity. But Mrs. Kitchell was grand. There is no other word for it.
This, however, is not the most exciting part of what I have to tell. Haystack Thompson was with her, and he actually wore a hat. Yes, he did too, Carin Carson. What is more, his hair had been cut—a little. But you could get seven crops a year of his hair, just as you can of alfalfa. He, too, was wonderful. He wore a collar. It was of celluloid, and it shone like Mother McBirney’s best milk pan. He did not bring his fiddle, and that made me feel sad. If he wants to court Hi’s “ma,” why let him, but is that any reason why he should turn his back on his faithful Betsy, his fiddle?
I felt like saying to him: “Haystack, Haystack, can any woman understand you, answer you, listen to you, rejoice with you, as your fiddle did? Will any woman cost you so little? Ask so few questions? Be such a companion on rainy and sunshiny days?”
But of course I didn’t say anything of the kind. Little Mrs. Kitchell is a brave creature, and Haystack is a lonely one. So if they decide to marry, I and everyone else ought to be glad. The only thing that really troubles me is how they are going to live. Dear Haystack never earns any money, except in little driblets, making baskets or playing at dances. Do you suppose that after that little beaver, Mrs. Kitchell, has reared a family of four, alone and unaided, that she’ll turn in and support Haystack in his old age? Wouldn’t that be odd of her? Still, perhaps she might like it. Hi, as I say, is “draying.” He has a pair of claybank mules and he is a proud man, I can tell you. He works quite as hard as anybody in Lee—harder than most. But he doesn’t like to be “driv.” You know he wouldn’t.