“She’s found, Hi,” Mr. Carson shouted in his hearty way. “Azalea is found!”
“Honest, sir?” cried Hi, stumbling forward. “Honest?”
“Honest Injun, hope to die!” roared back Mr. Carson.
Hi began kicking viciously at the dirt and twisting his body this way and that. He was in agony for fear he would “boo hoo,” as he put it to himself.
“Sap head!” he snarled under his breath, “Mammy’s baby boy!” He was calling himself names, and to some effect, for the invisible hand that had clutched his throat seemed to relax.
“Well,” said Mr. Carson, “let’s go sit out there on the headland and talk. We rode up here to-day not only to tell you this perfectly gorgeous piece of news, but also to talk over certain matters with you.”
“I’m sure we’re pleased to listen to anything you have to say, sir,” replied Thomas McBirney quaintly. So they seated themselves on the benches at “Outlook Point.”
“We are so,” murmured Ma McBirney in her soft voice.
“Won’t you begin at the beginning, Lucy?” said Mr. Carson to his wife. “Tell them how we came to leave the city and our friends and all, and settle here. Or shall I tell them, dear?”
Mrs. Carson leaned back against the trunk of a tulip tree and looked off across the valley.