When he came back into the room with Hilda, he asked:
“Didn’t Auntie get you any shoes when she ordered all them things from New York?”
“No. She just got clothes for Burchie—to go to Fort Worth, you know. I guess she got him shoes. Mine weren’t so bad then.” She sat down and thrust out her feet to put the reformed slippers on. The old man stared at those feet and frowned.
“Are those your best stockings, Pettie?”
“Well, these are a pair of my every-day ones,” Hilda said slowly.
“You put on your best ones, then.”
“But the best ones are a lot worser—about having holes in the feet, if that’s what you mean, Uncle Hank. I keep them for best because they’ve got the holes mostly where they don’t show.”
The old man held out a hand for the stockings which she pulled off and gave to him. He stood with one drawn over his big fist, shaking his head.
“Pettie, these stockings ain’t got any holes in the foot,” he said unexpectedly, and she saw that his eyes were twinkling. “Ain’t any feet to ’em to have holes in. All that’s left where feet was is just a bunch of fringe. You bring me the best you’ve got, and I’ll show you how my ma used to foot stockings sometimes for us children back in the Tennessee mountains.”
Hilda brought the best of Miss Valeria’s silk stockings. The lamp was trimmed, turned high, Uncle Hank’s spectacles were got out and adjusted—which was almost a ceremony in itself—and he opened the big housewife that contained his needles and thread and a queer steel thimble open at the end. He sighed a bit over the coarseness of his implements and the fineness of the material he was to work on.