“These are all I’ve got, Uncle Hank.”
“All you’ve got?” He picked her up and carried her to the lamplight as though she’d been a doll, examining the footgear. “Who in time would buy shoes like that for a child?”
“They weren’t bought for me,” Hilda had to admit. “They’re some old ones of Aunt Val’s.”
“Why don’t you wear your own?”
“My own are all worn out—and—and I can’t get my foot in any of them.”
For a minute Hilda thought Uncle Hank was very angry at her.
“Gimme them things off your feet,” he said, and set her down.
She handed the slippers to him. He took them, walked out through the kitchen calling to Sam Kee to bring a light. At the chopping block in the side yard, with the Chinaman holding his lamp high in the door, Hilda peering under an elbow, Hank caught up an ax and chopped off the French heels.
“There,” he grunted, pounding down nails, looking the slippers over before he brought them to her, “put ’em on, honey—they’ll do till to-morrow.” Then he raised his voice in a shout and called across to the bunk house:
“Hi—some of you boys! Shorty, that you? Tell Thomps to take charge up at the big pasture in the morning. I’ll not be there. I’m going to Mesquite.”