This, however, is not the most exciting part of what I have to tell. Haystack Thompson was with her, and he actually wore a hat. Yes, he did too, Carin Carson. What is more, his hair had been cut—a little. But you could get seven crops a year of his hair, just as you can of alfalfa. He, too, was wonderful. He wore a collar. It was of celluloid, and it shone like Mother McBirney’s best milk pan. He did not bring his fiddle, and that made me feel sad. If he wants to court Hi’s “ma,” why let him, but is that any reason why he should turn his back on his faithful Betsy, his fiddle?
I felt like saying to him: “Haystack, Haystack, can any woman understand you, answer you, listen to you, rejoice with you, as your fiddle did? Will any woman cost you so little? Ask so few questions? Be such a companion on rainy and sunshiny days?”
But of course I didn’t say anything of the kind. Little Mrs. Kitchell is a brave creature, and Haystack is a lonely one. So if they decide to marry, I and everyone else ought to be glad. The only thing that really troubles me is how they are going to live. Dear Haystack never earns any money, except in little driblets, making baskets or playing at dances. Do you suppose that after that little beaver, Mrs. Kitchell, has reared a family of four, alone and unaided, that she’ll turn in and support Haystack in his old age? Wouldn’t that be odd of her? Still, perhaps she might like it. Hi, as I say, is “draying.” He has a pair of claybank mules and he is a proud man, I can tell you. He works quite as hard as anybody in Lee—harder than most. But he doesn’t like to be “driv.” You know he wouldn’t.
“When will that trunk be up to the house, expressman?” the Northerners say, not so much as looking at him.
Then you ought to hear Hi drawl. You know his drawl! But it’s grown worse.
“Sometime along in the forenoon, I reckon, ma’am.”
“Aren’t you sure of it? Because if you aren’t, I shall get another man to bring it up.”
“Yessum. Only I’m the only one in town jest now that does trunk haulin’. But don’t you worry, ma’am. I feel tollable sure that there trunk will git up to you-all’s house some time before evenin’.”
You can just hear the Northerners pant when he says that.
I know you and your people are Northerners, Carin, dear, but you’re not the snap-turtle variety.