“I GUESS THEY WON’T EAT MUCH, BECAUSE MILLY ANN CATCHES ALL KIND OF LIVE THINGS. I DON’T LIKE HER TO DO THAT, BUT I HEARD SHE WAS BORN THAT WAY AND CAN’T HELP IT.”
“I GUESS THEY WON’T EAT MUCH, BECAUSE MILLY ANN CATCHES ALL KIND OF LIVE THINGS. I DON’T LIKE HER TO DO THAT, BUT I HEARD SHE WAS BORN THAT WAY AND CAN’T HELP IT.”
57CHAPTER VIPEG’S BARK
Virginia and Lafe Grandoken sat for some time with nothing but the tick-tack of the hammer to break the silence.
“It bein’ the first time you’ve visited us, kid,” broke in the man, pausing, “you can’t be knowin’ just what’s made us live this way.”
Virginia made a negative gesture and smiled, settling herself hopefully for a story, but Lafe brought a frightened expression quickly to her face by his low, even voice, and the ominous meaning of his words.
“Me an’ Peg’s awful poor,” said he.
“Then mebbe I’d better not stay, Mr. Lafe,” faltered Jinnie.
The cobbler threaded his fingers through his hair.
“The shanty’s awful small,” he interjected, thoughtfully.
“I think it’s awful nice, though,” offered the girl. Some thought closed her blue eyes, but they flashed open instantly.
“Cobbler,” she faltered, “is Mrs. Peggy mad when she grits her teeth and wags her head?”
As if by its own volition the cobbler’s hammer stayed itself in the air.
“No,” he smiled, “just when she acts the worst is when she’s likely to do her best ... I’ve knowed Peggy this many a year.”58
“She was a wee little bit cross to me,” commented the girl.
“Was she? I didn’t hear anything she said.”
“I’ll tell you, then, Mr. Lafe,” said Virginia. “When I was standing by the fire warming my hands, she come bustling out and looked awful mad. She said something about folks keeping their girls to home.”
“Well, what after that?” asked the cobbler, as Jinnie hesitated.
“She said she could see me eating my head off, and as long as I had to hide from my uncle, I wouldn’t be able to earn my salt.”
“Well, that’s right,” affirmed the cobbler, wagging his head. “You got to keep low for a while. Your Uncle Morse knows a lot of folks in this town.”
“But they don’t know me,” said Virginia.
“That’s good,” remarked Lafe.
As he said this, Peg opened the door roughly and ordered them in to breakfast.
Virginia sat beside the cobbler at the meager meal. On the table were three bowls of hot mush. As the fragrant odor rose to her nostrils, waves of joy crept slowly through the young body.
“Peggy ’lowed you’d be hungry, kid,” said the cobbler, pushing a bowl in front of her.
Mrs. Grandoken interrupted her husband with a growl.
“If I’ve any mem’ry, you ’lowed it yourself, Lafe Grandoken,” she muttered.
A smile deepened on the cobbler’s face and a slight flush rose to his forehead.
“I ’lowed it, too, Peggy dear,” he said.
“Eat your mush,” snapped the woman, “an’, Lafe, don’t ‘Peggy dear’ me. I hate it; see?”
Virginia refused to believe the startling words. She59would have adored being called “dear.” In Lafe’s voice, great love rang out; in the woman’s, she scarcely knew what. She glanced from one to the other as the cobbler lifted his head. He was always thanking some one in some unknown place for the priceless gift of his woman.
“I’ll ‘Peggy dear’ you whenever I feel like it, wife,” he said gravely, “for God knows you’re awful dear to me, Peg.”
Mrs. Grandoken ignored his speech, but when she returned from the stove, her voice was a little more gentle.
“You can both stuff your innards with hot mush. You can’t starve on that.... Here, kid, sit a little nearer!”
So Virginia Singleton, the lame cobbler, and Peggy began their first meal, facing a new day, which to Lafe was yesterday’s to-morrow.
A little later Virginia followed the wheel chair into the cobbler’s shop. Peggy grumblingly left them to return to her duties in the kitchen.
“Terrible cold day this,” Lafe observed, picking up a shoe. “The wind’s blowin’ forty miles the hour.”
Virginia’s next remark was quite irrelevant to the wind.
“I’m hoping Mrs. Peggy’ll get the money she was talking about.”
“Did she tell you she needed some?”
Virginia nodded, and when she spoke again, her tongue was parched and dry.
“She said she had to have money to-night. I hope she gets it; if she doesn’t I can’t stay and live with you.”
“I hope she gets it, too,” sighed the cobbler.
Of a sudden a thought seemed to strike him. The girl noticed it and looked a question.
“Peggy’s bark’s worser’n her bite,” Lafe explained in answer. “She’s like a lot of them little pups that do a lot of barkin’ but wouldn’t set their teeth in a biscuit.”60
“Does that mean,” Jinnie asked eagerly, “if she don’t get the two dollars to-night, Mrs. Peggy might let me stay?”
“That’s just what it means,” replied Lafe, making loud whacks on the sole of a shoe. “You’ll stay, all right.”
The depth of Virginia’s gratitude just then could only be estimated by one who had passed through the same fires of deep uncertainty, and in the ardor of it she flung her arms around the cobbler’s neck and kissed him.
When Lafe, with useless legs, had been brought home to his wife, she had stoically taken up the burden that had been his. At her husband’s suggestion that he should cobble, Mrs. Grandoken had fitted up the little shop, telling him grimly that every hand in the world should do its share. And that was how Lafe Grandoken, laborer and optimist, began his life’s great work—of cobbling a ray of comfort to every soul entering the shack. Sometimes he would insist that the sun shone brighter than the day before; then again that the clouds had a cooling effect. But if in the world outside Lafe found no comfort, he always spoke of to-morrow with a ring of hope in his voice.
Hope for another day was all Lafe had save Peggy, and to him these two—hope and the woman—were Heaven’s choicest gifts. Now Peggy didn’t realize all these things, because the world, with its trials and vicissitudes, gave her a different aspect of life, and she was not in even her ordinary good humor this day as she prepared the midday meal. Her mind was busy with thoughts of the new burden which the morning had brought.
Generally Lafe consulted her about any problem that presented itself before him, but, that day, he had taken a61young stranger into their home, and Mrs. Grandoken had used all kinds of arguments to persuade him to send the girl away. Peggy didn’t want another mouth to feed. She didn’t care for any one in the world but Lafe anyway.
When the dinner was on the table, she grimly brought her husband’s wheel chair to the kitchen. Virginia, by the cobbler’s invitation, followed.
“Any money paid in to-day?” asked Peggy gruffly, drawing the cobbler to his place at the table.
“No,” he said, smiling up at her, “but there’ll be a lot to-morrow.... Is there some bread for––for Jinnie, too?”
Peggy replied by sticking her fork into a biscuit and pushing it off on Virginia’s plate with her finger.
Virginia acknowledged it with a shy upward glance. Peg’s stolid face and quick, insistent movements filled her with vague discomfort. If the woman had tempered her harsh, “Take it, kid,” with a smile, the little girl’s heart might have ached less.
Lafe nodded to her when his wife left the room for a moment.
“That biscuit’s Peg’s bite,” said he, “so she’ll bark a lot the rest of the day, but don’t you mind.”
62CHAPTER VIIJUST A JEW
When the cobbler was at work again, Virginia, after picking up a few nails and tacks scattered on the floor, sat down.
“Would you like to hear something about me and Peggy, lassie?” he inquired, “an’ will you take my word for things?”
Jinnie nodded trustfully. She had already grown to love the cobbler, and her affection grew stronger as she stated:
“There isn’t anything you’d tell me, cobbler, I wouldn’t believe!”
With slow importance Lafe put down his hammer.
“I’m a Israelite,” he announced.
“What’s that?” asked the girl, immediately interested.
The cobbler looked over his spectacles and smiled.
“A Jew, just a plain Jew.”
“I don’t know what a Jew is either,” confessed Jinnie.
Lafe groped for words to explain his meaning.
“A Jew,” he ventured presently, “is one of God’s––chosen––folks. I mean one of them chose by Him to believe.”
“Believe what?”
“All that God said would be,” explained Lafe, reverently.
“And you believe it, cobbler?”63
“Sure, kid; sure.”
The shoemaker saw a question mirrored in the depths of the violet eyes.
“And thinking that way makes you happy, eh, Mr. Lafe? Does it make you smile the way you do at girls without homes?”
As she put this question sincerely to him, Jinnie reminded the cobbler of a beautiful flower lifting its proud head to the sun. In his experience with young people, he had never seen a girl like this one.
“It makes me happier’n anything!” he replied, cheerfully. “The wonderful part is I wouldn’t know about it if I hadn’t lost my legs. I’ll tell you about it, lass.”
Jinnie settled back contentedly.
“A long time ago,” began Mr. Grandoken, “God led a bunch of Jews out of a town where a king was torturin’ ’em––”
The listener’s eyes darkened in sympathy.
“They was made to do a lot of things that hurt ’em; their babies and women, too.”
Jinnie leaned forward and covered the horny hand with her slender fingers.
“Have you ever had any babies, Lafe?” she ventured.
A perceptible shadow crossed the man’s face.
“Yes,” said he hesitatingly. “Me and Peggy had a boy—a little fellow with curly hair—a Jew baby. Peggy always let me call him a Jew baby, though he was part Irish.”
“Oh!” gasped Jinnie, radiantly.
“I was a big fellow then, kid, with fine, strong legs, an’ nights, when I’d come home, I’d carry the little chap about.”
The cobbler’s eyes glistened with the memory, but shadowed almost instantly.64
“But one day––” he hesitated.
The pause brought an exclamation from the girl.
“And one day—what?” she demanded.
“He died; that’s all,” and Lafe gazed unseeingly at the snow-covered tracks.
“And you buried him?” asked Virginia, softly.
“Yes, an’ the fault was mostly mine, Jinnie. I ain’t had no way to make it up to Peggy, but there’s lots of to-morrows.”
“You’ll make her happy then?” ejaculated the girl.
“Yes,” said Lafe, “an’ I might a done it then, but I wouldn’t listen to the voices.”
A look of bewildered surprise crossed the girl’s face. Were they spirit voices, the voices in the pines, of which Lafe was speaking? She’d ask him.
“God’s voices out of Heaven,” said he, in answer to her query. “They come every night, but I wouldn’t listen, till one day my boy was took. Then I heard another voice, demandin’ me to tell folks what was what about God. But I was afraid an’ a—coward.”
The cobbler lapsed into serious thought, while Virginia moved a small nail back and forth on the floor with the toe of her shoe. She wouldn’t cry again, but something in the low, sad voice made her throat ache. After the man had been quiet for a long time, she pressed him with:
“After that, Lafe, what then?”
“After that,” repeated the cobbler, straightening his shoulders, “after that my legs went bad an’ then—an’ then––”
Virginia, very pale, went to the cobbler, and laid her head against his shoulder.
“An’ then, child,” he breathed huskily, “I believed, an’ I know, as well as I’m livin’, God sent his Christ for everybody; that in the lovin’ father”—Lafe raised his65eyes—“there’s no line drawed ’tween Jews an’ Gentiles. They’re all alike to Him. Only some’re goin’ one road an’ some another to get to Him, that’s all.”
These were quite new ideas to Virginia. In all her young life no one had ever conversed with her of such things. True, from her hill home on clear Sunday mornings she could hear the church bells ding-dong their hoarse welcome to the farmers, but she had never been inside the church doors. Now she regretted the lost opportunity. She wished to grasp the cobbler’s meaning. Noting her tense expression, Grandoken continued:
“It was only a misunderstandin’ ’tween a few Jews when they nailed the Christ to the cross. Why, a lot of Israelites back there believed in ’im. I’m one of them believin’ Jews, Jinnie.”
“I wish I was a Jew, cobbler,” sighed Jinnie. “I’d think the same as you then, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, you don’t have to be a Jew to believe,” returned Lafe. “It’s as easy to do as ’tis to roll off’n a log.”
This lame man filled her young heart with a deep longing to help him and to have him help her.
“You’re going to teach me all about it, ain’t you, Lafe?” she entreated presently.
“Sure! Sure! You see, it’s this way: Common, everyday folks—them with narrer minds—ain’t much use for my kind of Jews. I’m livin’ here in a mess of ’em. Most of ’em’s shortwood gatherers. When I found out about the man on the cross, I told it right out loud to ’em all. ... You’re one of ’em. You’re a Gentile, Jinnie.”
“I’m sorry,” said the girl sadly.
“Oh, you needn’t be. Peg’s one, too, but she’s got God’s mark on her soul as big as any of them women belongin’ to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob––I ain’t sure but it’s a mite bigger.”66
The speaker worked a while, bringing the nails from his lips in rapid, even succession. Peg was the one bright spot that shone out of his wonderful yesterdays. She was the one link that fastened him securely to a useful to-morrow.
Virginia counted the nails mechanically as they were driven into the leather, and as the last one disappeared, she said:
“Are you always happy, Lafe, when you’re smiling? Why, you smile—when—even when—” she stammered, caught her breath, and finished, “even when Mrs. Peggy barks.”
An amused laugh came from the cobbler’s lips.
“That’s ’cause I know her, lass,” said he. “Why, when I first found out about the good God takin’ charge of Jews an’ Gentiles alike, I told it to Peg, an’, my, how she did hop up an’ down, right in the middle of the floor. She said I was meddlin’ into things that had took men of brains a million years to fix up.
“But I knew it as well as anything,” he continued. “God’s love is right in your heart, right there––” He bent over and gently touched the girl.
She looked up surprised.
“I heard He was setting on a great high throne up in Heaven,” she whispered, glancing up, “and he scowled dead mad when folks were wicked.”
Lafe smiled, shook his head, and picked up his hammer.
“No,” said he. “No, no! He’s right around me, an’ He’s right around you, an’ everything a feller does or has comes from Him.”
Virginia’s thoughts went back to an episode of the country.
“Does He help a kid knock hell out of another kid when that kid is beating a littler kid?”67
Her eyes were so earnest, so deep in question, that the cobbler lowered his head. Not for the world would he have smiled at Virginia’s original question. He scarcely knew how to answer, but presently said:
“Well, I guess it’s all right to help them who ain’t as big as yourself, but it ain’t the best thing in the world to gad any one.”
“Oh, I never licked any of ’em,” Jinnie assured him. “I just wanted to find out, that’s all.”
“What’d you do when other kids beat the littler ones?” demanded the cobbler.
“Just shoved ’em down on the ground and set on ’em, damn ’em!” answered Jinnie.
Lafe raised his eyes slowly.
“I was wonderin’ if I dared give you a lesson, lass,” he began in a low voice.
“I wish you would,” replied Virginia, eagerly. “I’d love anything you’d tell me.”
“Well, I was wonderin’ if you knew it was wicked to swear?”
Like a shot came a pang through her breast. She had offended her friend.
“Wicked? Wicked?” she gasped. “You say it’s wicked to swear, cobbler?”
Lafe nodded. “Sure, awful wicked,” he affirmed.
Virginia took a long breath.
“I didn’t know it,” she murmured. “Father said it wasn’t polite, but that’s nothing. How is it wicked, cobbler?”
Lafe put two nails into position in the leather sole and drove them deep; then he laid down the hammer again.
“You remember my tellin’ you this morning of the man with angels, white angels, hoverin’ about the earth helpin’ folks?”68
“Yes,” answered Virginia.
“Well, He said it was wicked.”
An awe-stricken glance fell upon the speaker.
“Did He tell you so, Lafe?”
“Yes,” said Lafe. “It ain’t a question of politeness at all, but just bein’ downright wicked. See, kid?”
“Yes, cobbler, I do now,” Jinnie answered, hanging her head. “Nobody but Matty ever told me nothing before. I guess she didn’t know much about angels, though.”
“Well,” continued Lafe, going back to his story, “God give his little boy Jesus to a mighty good man an’ a fine woman—as fine as Peg—to bring up. An’ Joseph trundled the little feller about just as I did my little Lafe, an’ bye-an’-bye when the boy grew, He worked as his Father in Heaven wanted him to. The good God helped Joseph an’ Mary to bring the Christ down face to face with us—Jews an’ Gentiles alike.”
“With you and me?” breathed Virginia, solemnly.
“With you an’ me, child,” repeated the cobbler in subdued tones.
Virginia walked to the window and drummed on the pane. Through mere force of habit the cobbler bent his head and caught the tacks between his teeth. He did it mechanically; he was thinking of the future. In the plan of events which Lafe had worked out for himself and Peg, there was but one helper, and each day some new demonstration came to make his faith the brighter. In the midst of his meditation, Jinnie returned to her seat.
“Cobbler, will you do something I ask you?”
“Sure,” assented Lafe.
“Get busy trusting Peg’ll get the two dollars to-night.”
“I have long ago, child, an’ she’s goin’ to get it, too. That’s one blessin’ about believin’. No one nor nobody can keep you from gettin’ what’s your own.”69
“Mrs. Peggy doesn’t think that way,” remarked Virginia, with keen memories of Mrs. Grandoken’s snapping teeth.
“No, not yet, but I’m trustin’ she will. You see how ’tis in this shop. Folks is poor around here. I trust ’em all, Jews and Gentiles alike, but Peg thinks I ought to have the money the minute the work’s done. But I know no man can keep my money from me, so I soothe her down till she don’t whine any more. That’s how I know her bark’s worser’n her bite. Didn’t I tell you about the biscuit?”
“Yes,” replied Virginia, “and I hope it’ll only be bark about the money; what if she didn’t get it?”
“She’ll get it,” assured Lafe, positively.
Just before bed time Lafe whispered in Jinnie’s ear, “Peggy got the two! I told you she would. God’s good, child, and we’ve all got Him in us alike.”
And that night, as the air waxed colder and colder, Virginia Singleton, daughter of the rich, slept her tired sleep amid the fighters of the world.
70CHAPTER VIII“EVERY HAND SHALL DO ITS SHARE,” QUOTH PEG.
The fifth day of Jinnie’s stay in the cobbler’s home crept out of the cold night accompanied by the worst blizzard ever known along the lake. Many times, if it had not been for the protecting overhanging hills, the wood gatherers’ huts would have been swept quite away. As it was, Jinnie felt the shack tremble and sway, and doubted its ability to withstand the onslaught.
After breakfast found Lafe and Jinnie conversing interestedly in the shop. The cobbler allowed several bright nails to fall into his palm before he answered the question which was worrying the girl.
“There ain’t no use troublin’ about it, child,” commented he. “We can’t starve.”
“If I could only work,” said Jinnie gloomily, “I bet Peg’d soon like me, because she wouldn’t have to go out in the cold at all. But you think it’d be bad for me, eh, Lafe?”
“Well, you couldn’t go around to the factories or stores very well,” replied Lafe. “You see your uncle’s tryin’ to trace you. I showed you that this mornin’ in the paper, didn’t I, where he mourned over you as lost after findin’ your father dead?”
Jinnie nodded.
“Yes, I read it,” she said.
“An’ he can’t get your money for seven years. That makes him madder’n a hatter, of course.”71
“If he’d let me alone, I’d just as soon give him the money,” Jinnie said mournfully.
Lafe shook his head.
“The law wouldn’t let you, till you was of age. No, sir, you’d either have to die a natural death or—another kind, an’ you’re a pretty husky young kid to die natural.”
“I don’t want to die at all,” shivered Jinnie.
Lafe encouraged her with a smile.
“If he finds you,” pursued Lafe, “I’d have to give you up. I couldn’t do anything else. We might pray ’bout it.”
A wistful expression came over Jinnie’s face.
“Is praying anything like wishing, cobbler?”
“Somethin’ the same,” replied Mr. Grandoken, “with this difference—wishin’ is askin’ somethin’ out of somewhere of some one you don’t know; prayin’ is just talkin’ to some one you’re acquainted with! See?”
“Yes, I think I do,” responded the girl. “Your way is mostly praying, isn’t it, Lafe?”
“Prayin’s more powerful than wishin’, lass,” said Lafe. “When I was first paralyzed, I done a lot of wishin’. I hadn’t any acquaintance with anybody but Peggy. After that I took up with God, an’ He’s been awful good to me.”
“He’s been good to me, too, Lafe, bringing me here.”
This seemed to be a discovery to Virginia, and for a few minutes her brain was alive with new hopes. Suddenly she drew her chair in front of Grandoken.
“Will to-morrow ever be to-day, cobbler?”
Lafe looked at the solemn-faced girl with smiling, kindly eyes.
“Sure, kid, sure,” he asserted. “When you get done wishin’ an’ there ain’t nothin’ left in the world to want, then to-morrow’s to-day.”
Jinnie smiled dismally. “There’d never be a day, cobbler,72that I couldn’t think of something I’d like for you—and Peg.”
Lafe meditated an instant before replying. Then:
“I’ve found out that we’re always happier, kid, when we’ve got a to-morrow to look to,” said he, “’cause when you’re just satisfied, somethin’s very apt to go smash. I was that way once.”
He paused for some seconds.
“Jinnie,” he murmured, “I haven’t told you how I lost the use of my legs, have I?”
“No, Lafe.”
“Well, as I was sayin’, there didn’t used to be any to-morrow for me. I always lived just for that one day. I had Peg an’ the boy. I could work for ’m, an’ that was enough. It’s more’n lots of men get in this world.”
His voice trailed into a whisper and ceased. He was living for the moment in the glory of his past usefulness. The rapt, wrinkled face shone as if it had been touched by angel fingers. Virginia watched him reverently.
“It’s more’n two years ago, now,” proceeded the cobbler presently, “an’ I was workin’ on one of them tall uptown buildin’s. Jimmy Malligan worked right alongside of me. We was great chums, Jimmy an’ me. One day the ropes broke on one of the scaffoldin’s—at least, that’s what folks said. When we was picked up, my legs wasn’t worth the powder to blow ’em up—an’ Jimmy was dead. ... But Peg says I’m just as good as ever.”
Here Mr. Grandoken took out his pipe and struck a match. “But I ain’t. ’Cause them times Peg didn’t have to work. We always had fires enough, an’ didn’t live like this. But, as I was sayin’, me an’ Peg just kinder lived in to-day. Now, when I hope that mebbe I’ll walk again, I’m always measurin’ up to-morrow––Peg’s the best woman in the world.”73
Jinnie shivered as a gust of wind rattled the window pane.
“She makes awful good hot mush,” she commented.
“Anyhow,” went on Lafe, “I was better off’n Jimmy, because he was stone dead. There wasn’t any to-day or to-morrow for him, an’ I’ve still got Peggy.”
“And this shop,” supplemented the girl, glancing around admiringly.
“Sure, this shop,” assented Lafe. “I had clean plumb forgot this shop—I mean, for the minute—but I wouldn’t a forgot it long.”
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and set to work.
Neither girl nor man spoke for a while, and it wasn’t until Lafe heard Peg’s voice growling at one of Milly’s kittens that he ceased his tick-tack.
“You wouldn’t like to join my club, lass, would you?” he ventured.
Jinnie looked up quickly.
“Of course I would,” she said eagerly. “What kind of a club is it?”
The girl’s faith in the cobbler was so great that if Lafe had commanded her to go into danger, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
“Tell me what the club is, Lafe,” she repeated.
“Sure,” responded Lafe. “Come here an’ shake hands! All you have to do to be a member of my club is to be ‘Happy in Spite’ an’ believe everythin’ happenin’ is for the best.”
A mystified expression filled the girl’s earnest blue eyes.
“I’m awful happy,” she sighed, “and I’m awful glad to come in your club, but I just don’t understand what it means.”
The cobbler paid no attention for some moments. He was looking out of the window, in a far-away mood, dreaming74of an active past, when Jinnie accidentally knocked a hammer from the bench. Lafe Grandoken glanced in the girl’s direction.
“I’m happy in spite—” he murmured. Then he stopped abruptly, and his hesitation made the girl repeat:
“Happy in spite?” with a rising inflection. “What does that mean, Lafe?”
Lafe began to work desperately.
“It means just this, kid. I’ve got a little club all my own, an’ I’ve named it ‘Happy in Spite.’” His eyes gathered a mist as he whispered, “Happy in spite of everything that ain’t just what I want it to be. Happy in spite of not walkin’—happy in spite of Peg’s workin’.”
Virginia raised unsmiling, serious eyes to the speaker.
“I want to come in your club, too, Lafe,” she said slowly. “I need to be happy in spite of lots of things, just like you, cobbler.”
A long train steamed by. Jinnie went to the window, and looked out upon it. When the noise of the engine and the roar of the cars had ceased, she whirled around.
“Cobbler,” she said in a low voice, “I’ve been thinking a lot since yesterday.”
“Come on an’ tell me about it, lassie,” said Lafe.
She sat down, hitching her chair a bit nearer him, leaned her elbow on her knee, and buried a dimpled chin in the palm of her hand.
“Do you suppose, Lafe, if a girl believed in the angels, anybody could hurt her?”
“I know they couldn’t, kid, an’ it’s as true’s Heaven.”
“Well, then, why can’t I go out and work?”
Lafe paused and looked over his spectacles.
“Peggy says, ‘Every hand should do its share’,” he quoted.
Jinnie winced miserably. She picked up several nails75from the floor. It was a pretext for an activity to cover her embarrassment.
The cobbler allowed her to busy herself a while in this way. Then he said:
“Sit in the chair an’ wrap up in the blankets, Jinnie. I want to talk with you.”
She did as she was bidden, sitting quietly until the man chose to speak.
“I guess you’re beginnin’ to believe,” said he, at length, “an’ if you do, a world full of uncles couldn’t hurt you. Peg says as how you got to work if you stay, an’ if you have the faith––”
Jinnie rose tremblingly.
“I know I’ll be all right,” she cried. “I just know you and me believing would keep me safe.”
Her eagerness caused Lafe to draw the girl to him.
“Can you holler good an’ loud?” he asked.
The girl shot him a curious glance.
“Sure I can.”
“Can you walk on icy walks––”
“Oh, I’m as strong as anything,” Jinnie cut in, glancing downward at herself.
“I know a lot of kids who earn money,” said Lafe meditatively.
“What do they do?”
“Get wood out of the marsh behind the huts there. Some of ’em keeps families on it.”
“Sell wood! And there’s lots of it, Lafe?”
“Lots,” replied Lafe.
Sell wood! The very words, new, wonderful, and full of action, rang through Jinnie’s soul like sweet sounding bells. Waves of unknown sensations beat delightfully upon her girlish heart. If she brought in a little money every day, Peggy would be kinder. She could; she was76sure she could. She was drawn from her whirling thoughts by the cobbler’s voice.
“Could you do it, kid? People could think your name was Jinnie Grandoken.”
Jinnie choked out a reply.
“And mebbe I could make ten cents a day.”
“I think you could, Jinnie, an’ here’s Lafe right ready to help you.”
Virginia Singleton felt quite faint. She sat down, her heart beating under her knit jacket twice as fast as a girl’s heart ought to beat. Lafe had suddenly opened up a path to usefulness and glory which even in her youthful dreams had never appeared to her.
“Call Peggy,” said Lafe.
Soon Peg stood before them, with a questioning face.
“The kid’s goin’ to work,” announced Lafe, “We’ve got a way of keepin’ her uncle off’n her trail.”
Mrs. Grandoken looked from her husband to Virginia.
“I want to work like other folks,” the girl burst forth, looking pleadingly at the shoemaker’s wife.
Peggy wiped her arms violently upon her apron, and there flashed across her face an inscrutable expression that Lafe had learned to read, but which frightened the newcomer.
Oh, how Jinnie wanted to do something to help them both! Now, at this moment, when there seemed a likelihood of being industriously useful, Jinnie loved them the more. She was going to work, and into her active little brain came the sound of pennies, and the glint of silver.
“I want to work, Peggy,” she beseeched, “and I’ll make a lot of money for you.”
“Every hand ought to do its share,” observed Peg, stolidly, glancing at the girl’s slender fingers. They looked so small, so unused to hard work, that she turned away.77An annoying, gripping sensation attacked her suddenly, but in another minute she faced the girl again.
“If you do it, miss, don’t flounce round’s if you owned the hull of Paradise Road, ’cause it’ll be nothin’ to your credit, whatever you do. You didn’t make yourself.”
At the door she turned and remarked, “You’ve got t’have a shoulder strap to hold the wood, an’ you musn’t carry too much to onct. It might hurt your back.”
“I’ll be careful,” gulped Jinnie, “and mebbe I could help make the strap, eh, Lafe?”
An hour later Jinnie was running a long needle through a tough piece of leather. She was making the strap to peddle shortwood, and a happier girl never breathed.
Peg watched her without comment as Lafe fitted the strap about her shoulders. In fact, there was nothing for the woman to say, when the violet eyes were fixed questioningly upon her. Peggy thought of the hunger which would be bound to come if any hands were idle, so she muttered in excuse, “There’s nothin’ like gettin’ used to a thing.”
“It’s a fine strap, isn’t it, Lafe?” asked the girl, “It’s almost as good as a cart.”
“You can’t use a cart in the underbrush,” explained Lafe. “That’s why the twig gatherers use straps.”
“I see,” murmured Jinnie.
When the cobbler and girl were once more alone together, they had a serious confab. They decided that every penny Jinnie brought in should go to enriching the house, and the girl’s eyes glistened as she heard the shoemaker list over the things that would make them comfortable.
Most delightful thoughts came to endow the girl’s mental world, which now reached from the cobbler’s shop to the marsh, over a portion of the city, and back again. It78was rosy-hued, bright, sparkling with the pennies and nickels she intended to earn. All her glory would come with the aid of that twig gatherer’s leather strap. She looked down upon it with a proud toss of her head. Jinnie was recovering the independent spirit which had dominated her when she had wandered alone on the hills away to the north.
“I wouldn’t wonder if I’d make fifteen cents some days,” she remarked later at the supper table.
“If you make ten, you’ll be doin’ well, an’ you and Lafe’ll probably bust open with joy if you do,” snapped Peg. “Oh, Lord, I’m gettin’ sick to my stomick hearin’ you folks brag. Go to bed now, kid, if you’re to work to-morrow.”
Jinnie fell asleep to dream that her hand was full of pennies, and her pockets running over with nickels. She was just stooping to pick up some money from the sidewalk when Peg’s voice pierced her ear,
“Kid,” said she, “it’s mornin’, an’ your first workin’ day. Now hurry your lazy bones an’ get dressed.”
79CHAPTER IXBY THE SWEAT OF HER BROW
Over the bridge into Paradise Road went the lithe, buoyant figure of a girl, a loose strap hanging from one straight shoulder. Jinnie was radiantly happy, for her first day had netted the family twenty cents, and if Paradise Road had been covered with eggs, she would not have broken many in her flight homeward. If she had been more used to Mrs. Grandoken, she would have understood the peculiar tightening at the corners of the woman’s thin lips when she delivered the precious pittance. Virginia searched the other’s face for the least sign of approbation. She wished Peg would kiss her, but, of course, she dared not suggest it. To have a little show of affection seemed to Jinnie just then the most desirable thing in the world, but the cobbler’s wife merely muttered as she went away to the kitchen, and Virginia, sighing, sat down.
“Now suppose you tell me all about it, Jinnie,” Lafe suggested smilingly; “just where you went an’ how you earned all the money.”
Fatigued almost beyond the point of rehearsing her experiences, Jinnie took Milly Ann on her lap and curled up in the chair.
“I guess I’ve walked fifteen miles,” she began. “You know most folks don’t want wood.”
Lafe took one sidewise glance at the beautiful face. He remembered a picture he had once seen of an angel. Jinnie’s face was like that picture.80
“Well, first, Lafe,” she recounted, “I gathered the wood in the marsh, then I went straight across the back field through the swamp. It’s froze over harder’n hell––”
Lafe uttered a little, “Sh!” and Jinnie, with scarlet face, supplemented,
“I mean harder’nanything.”
“Sure,” replied Lafe, nodding.
“Mr. Bates and his kids were there, but he c’n carry a pile three times bigger’n I can!”
“Well, you’re only a child. Sometimes Bates can’t sell all he gets, though.”
“I sold all mine,” asserted Jinnie, brightening.
The cobbler recalled the history of Jinnie’s lonely little life—of how during those first fifteen years no kindly soul had given her counsel, and now his heart glowed with thanksgiving as he realized that she was growing in faith and womanliness. He wanted Jinnie to give credit where credit was due, so he said,
“You sold your wood because you had a helpin’ hand.”
Jinnie was about to protest.
“I mean––” breathed Lafe.
“Oh, angels! Eh?” interrupted the girl. “Yes, I sold my last two cents’ worth by saying what you told me—‘He gives His angels charge over thee’—and, zip! a woman bought the last bundle and gave me a cent more’n I charged her.”
“Good!” Lafe was highly pleased. “It’ll work every time, an’ to make a long story short, it works on boots an’ shoes, too.”
“Wood’s awful heavy,” Jinnie decided, irrelevantly.
“Sure,” soothed Lafe again. He hesitated a minute, drew his hand across his eyes, and continued, “An’, by the way, Jinnie––”
Jinnie’s receptive face caused the cobbler to proceed:81
“I wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with Bates’ son Maudlin, if I was you.... He’s a bad lot.”
Jinnie’s head drooped. She flushed to her hair.
“I saw him to-day,” she replied. “He’s got wicked eyes. I hate boys who wink!”
A look of desperation clouded the fair young face, and the cobbler, looking at the slender girlish figure, and thinking the while of Maudlin Bates, suddenly put out his hand.
“Come here, lassie,” he said.
Another flame of color mounted to Jinnie’s tousled hair. With hanging head, she pushed Milly Ann from her lap and walked to the cobbler’s side.
“What did Maudlin say to you?” he demanded.
“He said he’d—he’d crack my twigs for me if—if I’d kiss him, and he pinched me when I wouldn’t.”
Anger and deep resentment displayed themselves on Lafe’s pale face.
“Jinnie, lass,” he breathed. “I c’n trust you, child. Can’t I trust you? You wouldn’t––”
Jinnie drew away from Lafe’s embrace.
“I guess I’d rather be killed’n have Maudlin kiss me,” she cried passionately.
Just then Peg came to the door.
“Run to the butcher’s for a bit of chopped steak, Jinnie,” she ordered, “an’ make your head save your heels by bringin’ in some bread.”
Jinnie jumped up quickly.
“Please use some of my money to buy ’em, Peggy,” she begged. “Oh, please do.”
Peggy eyed her sternly.
“Kid,” she warned. “I want to tell you something before you go any farther in life. You may be smart, but ’tain’t no credit to you, ’cause you didn’t make yourself. I’m tellin’ you this for fear makin’ so much money’ll turn82your head.... Here’s your ten cents.... Now go along.”
After Jinnie had gone, Mrs. Grandoken sat down opposite her husband.
“The girl looks awful tired,” she offered, after a moment’s silence.
“She’s been earnin’ her livin’ by the sweat of her brow,” replied Lafe, with a wan smile.
“Mebbe she’ll get used to it,” growled Peg. “Of course I don’t like her, but I don’t want her hurt. ’Twon’t make her sick, will it?”
“No, she’s as strong as a little ox. She’s got enough strength in her body to work ten times harder, but Peg––” Here Lafe stopped and looked out to the hill beyond the tracks, “but, Peggy, perhaps we c’n find her somethin’ else after a while, when there ain’t so much fear of her uncle. To make a long story short, Peg, danger of him’s the only thing that’ll keep the kid luggin’ wood.”
“I was wonderin’,” returned Peg, “if we couldn’t get some one interested in ’er—the Kings, mebbe. They’re a good sort, with lots of money, an’ are more’n smart.”
Lafe’s eyes brightened visibly, but saddened again. He shook his head.
“We can’t get the Kings ’cause I read in the paper last night they’re gone away West, to be gone for a year or more.... It’s a good idea, though. Some one’ll turn up, sure.”
“When they do, my man,” Peg said quickly, “don’t be takin’ any credit to yourself, ’cause you hadn’t ought to take credit for the plannin’ your sharp brains do.”
As he shook his head, smiling, she left him quickly and shut the door.