“Ain’t got no heavier ones than these, have ye, Pettie?” he asked, and when she shook her head, “Oh, well—it’ll never be seen on a galloping hoss, and that’s sure what you are these days, honey.”
The stockings were spread out evenly, their tatters cut away, a foot formed on exactly the pattern you may find in some woven stockings, a good new sole cut from the stoutest part of another stocking sewed in. The leg was seamed down to a reasonable fit for Hilda, and finally the job was complete.
“There,” Hank laid his scissors by. “Might stand you in hand to know how to do that right—if you should ever have it to do, Pettie. My mother held that a woman that would fix over a stocking by just sewing it into a kind of a bag, with no real shaped foot, as I’ve seen done, was a slommick.”
“Oh, I’ll fix over all the rest of them, Uncle Hank, now that you’ve showed me the way. I can do it. I’ll take pattern by these,” she looked fondly at the neatly folded pair lying on the table. “I won’t just sew them up into bags and be a slommick.”
Through her mind drifted the vision of what a slommick might be like—a slidey creature, of the most slatternly, reprehensible “personal appearance,” and with a sort of elongated head, trailing hands that fumbled whatever they touched, dropped things and left them lying. Yes, as Shorty would say, she “savvied slommick, all right.”
“You’ll not have to fix any more of ’em, this time,” said Hank with decision. “I’m going to Mesquite to-morrow.”
“Oh, Uncle Hank—and you’ll get me some stockings? Maybe two pairs? I can do with two pairs—and these that you’ve fixed over so beautifully. Or”—suddenly remembering the money-eating, fire-spitting mortgages—“maybe I could get along with only one new pair.”
He smiled a little, and said:
“Have to have new shoes, too. And I bet you need frocks, and other things. Uh-huh, I see you do,” as he caught her eye. “All of ’em have to be tried on, so’s they’ll fit. Nothing for it but to take you in with me.”
“Oh, Uncle Hank—is beef up?” Hilda asked breathlessly, and he laughed out.