“Yes, Hi.”
“My ma, you know,” but his cogs stopped again.
“Well, I don’t exactly know her, Hi, but I’d like to.”
“She can weave, sir, better than anybody. She can weave the Tudor Rose, and the Andrew Jackson Cabin, and the Diamond and Cat Track—Oh, most anything. You ought to see her weaving. And she can make her own dyes, just beautiful. But what’s the use? Where she lives nobody cares about her weaving. If you’d just ask her to come on, sir, since Mrs. McBirney don’t want to, she’d run the place for you, fine, and teach the women all the old patterns.”
His little black eyes seemed to hold flames in them as he turned his face, twitching with his excitement, toward Mr. Carson.
“Why, Hi, could she really? Where does she live? I can go and see her.”
“She lives away over on the far side of Steamboat Mountain, sir. Pa’s dead, you know, and there’s three children for ma to care for. She drives the horse to town and gets washing, and she farms a little. But it ain’t much. I had to leave home so’s I’d not be making her feed me. That’s why I went away with my uncle Sisson.” His face flushed scarlet through all the brown as he thought of his connection with this man whom he hated, and whom he knew all these people with him held in contempt.
“You shall go with me, Hi, and show me the way. We go by train, of course?”
“By train first. Then we drive.” Little drops of sweat broke out on Hi’s forehead and about his mouth and the tears swam into his hot eyes.
“Oh, if we could be together, here, sir! I just want to see my ma so! I’ve been wanting to see her all the time, and now since my arm got broke I can’t hardly live, I want her so.”