Rose O'Paradise. Grace Miller White
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.
70
CHAPTER 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, 72 that 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’