“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.” Mary McBirney reached out a hand and drew the boy over beside her. He might have been ashamed of her petting at another moment, but now he nestled up close to her, big boy that he was, and looked shyly up into her face. “It was being with you, ma’am,” he murmured, “that made me so homesick, I reckon. It made me remember what ma was like.” Mrs. Carson leaned forward to smile on him. “We’ll have you and your mother together, Hi,” she declared, the languor gone out of her lovely voice, “one way or another. You may take my word for that. And if, as you say, she can attend to the weaving, why you may be sure she shall be given it to do. We can get some one to help her keep her house and care for the children. I agree with Mrs. McBirney, a mother has to make a happy home. That’s her first business—and her best business, too, isn’t it? But since your mother has to have the work outside in order to have a home, we’ll arrange the best we can.” “I shall learn how to weave, too, mother,” Carin announced. “O mother, can’t I have that big room upstairs for a studio? I want to put my sketches up on the wall, and have a place to paint. Please, mother! I’d be so happy if I could have a studio of my own. If everyone else is to do something, I want to do something too. And I know I can paint. And I know I can weave. And I can make baskets. I have the dearest ideas for shapes and designs. Oh, I’d so much rather do that than study arithmetic and grammar.” “Perhaps there’ll be time for both, my dear,” smiled her mother. “There seems to be a great deal of time down here. I’m having a friend of mine come down to act as governess for Carin,” Mrs. Carson said, turning to Mrs. McBirney. “She will teach her at home for the present, for I don’t feel as if I could let her go away to boarding school yet. Fortunately, my friend, Miss Parkhurst, paints charmingly in water colors, and so Carin will be able to take some lessons in that. Carin wants to make an artist of herself, and I’m sure I’d love to have her if she really has the talent. Well, come, Charles, we must be riding down the mountain. Will you meet Azalea this afternoon, Mr. McBirney?” “You just believe I will, ma’am,” declared Thomas McBirney, going forward to hold Mrs. Carson’s horse for her. “And it will be as happy an errand as I ever took, ma’am.” “We’ll be pleased to see you often, ma’am,” said Mrs. McBirney in her quaint way, as she stood beside Mrs. Carson’s beautiful white mare, looking up into the delicate, lovely face of the woman above her. “It’s a great privilege for me to know you, ma’am.”