"I must ask you," she was saying, "where you get your way of talking. We of the mountains,"—and she noted his look of thanks for this acknowledgment of mutual origin—"come out with our dialect pure; but I find you mixing it up with bits of really correct speech!"
"I can't talk yet like I want to," he answered, carefully choosing his words, "but what I've learned was up in Sunlight Patch. Some of the finest speakin' in the world, I reckon, is up thar!"
"Up there," Jane corrected.
"Up there," he repeated after her, adding: "I knowed that, but forgot."
"What and where is Sunlight Patch? Twice you've spoken of it."
"Hit's a cabin 'n' a clarin'," he answered simply, "back in the mountings. I war borned thar—there; all of we-uns war born there."
"An odd name," she mused, although she knew odd names were typical of the mountains.
"Not when ye know how-cum-hit," he said. "Hit war called that-a-way by a preacher onct. Yeou see, Miss Jane, my sister war born blind—leastways, the fu'st thing they knowed of hit she war blind. Thar war four of us brats in the cabin, two brothers older'n me who got shot, 'n' her. I war the kid, ye mought say, 'n' when I war mighty small some-un took her off ter the blind school in the settlements. She only come back 'bout two year ago, 'n' fetched some blind books they'd give her."
"What were the books?" Jane softly asked, touched by the picture of that poverty she had so well known.
"The New Testament," he answered. "Thar war five big books of that. Then she had four big-uns of a feller named Dickens—'The Tale of Two Cities,' that war. But what I liked most war the three wrote by a Cooper feller—he warn't no kin ter our Coopers, Ruth says—called 'The Last of the Mohigans.' That Injun, Uncas, war a man, I tell yeou! Thar war some poetry I liked mighty well, too. Ruth says all of 'em wouldn't take up so much room, if 'twarn't fer the blind writin'."