Rose O'Paradise Part 50

"Lafe wants you, Peg. He's sick, isn't he? What happened to him, Peggy?"

Bobbie uttered a whining cry.

"Jinnie," he called, "Jinnie, come here!"

Peg pushed the girl back into the little hall.

"You shut up, Bobbie," she ordered, "and sit there! Jinnie'll come back in a minute."

Then the speaker shoved the girl ahead of her into the shop and stood with her arms folded, austerely silent.

"I want to know what's the matter," insisted Jinnie.

"You tell 'er, Peg. I just couldn't," whispered Lafe.

Mrs. Grandoken drew a deep breath and ground her teeth.

"You've got to go away, kid," she began tersely, dropping into a chair.

Jinnie blanched in fright.

"My uncle!" she exclaimed, growing weak-kneed.

"No such thing," snapped Peg. "You're goin' to a fine school an' learn how to be a elegant young lady."

"Who said so?" flashed Jinnie.

"Mr. King," cut in Lafe.

Then Jinnie understood, and she laughed hysterically. For one blessed single moment her woman's heart told her that Theodore would not be so eager for her welfare if he didn't love her.

"Was that what made your tears, Lafe?"

Her eyes glistened as she uttered the question.

Lafe nodded.

"And what made Bobbie cry so loud?"

"Yes."

"Was Mr. King here?"

"Sure," said Peg.

"And he said I was to go away to school, eh?"

"Yes," repeated Peg, "an' of course you'll go."

Jinnie went forward and placed a slender hand on Lafe's shoulder. Then she faced Mrs. Grandoken.

"Didn't you both know me well enough to tell him I wouldn't go for anything in the world?"

If a bomb had been placed under Mrs. Grandoken's chair, she wouldn't have jumped up any more quickly, and she flung out of the door before Jinnie could stop her. Then the girl wound her arms about the cobbler's neck.

"I wouldn't leave you, dear, not for any school on earth," she whispered. "Now I'm going to tell Mr. King so."

Jinnie sped along Paradise Road and into the nearest drug store. It took her a few minutes to find Theodore's number, and when she took off the receiver, she had not the remotest idea how to word her refusal. She only remembered Lafe's sad face and Bobbie's sharp, agonizing calling of her name.

"I want to speak to Mr. King," she said in answer to a strange voice at the other end of the wire.

Her voice was so low that a sharp reply came back.

"Who'd you want?"

"Theodore King."

She waited a minute and then another voice, a voice she knew and loved, said,

"This is Mr. King!"

"I'm Jinnie Grandoken," Theodore heard. "I wanted to tell you I wouldn't go away from home ever; no, never! I wouldn't; I couldn't!"

"Don't you want to study?" Mr. King asked eagerly.

Jinnie shook her head as if she were face to face with him.

"I'm studying all the time," she said brokenly, "and I can't go away now. If they couldn't spare me one day, they couldn't all the time."

"Then I suppose that settles it," was the reluctant reply. "I hoped you'd be pleased, but never mind! I'll see you very soon."

"I told him!" said Jinnie, facing the cobbler. "Now, Lafe, don't ever think I'm going away, because I'm not. I've got some plans of my own for us all when I'm eighteen. Till then I stay right here."

At dinner Peg cut off a very large piece of meat and flung it on Jinnie's plate.

"I suppose you're plumin' yourself because you didn't go to school; but you needn't, 'cause nothin' could drag you from this shop, an'

there's my word for it." Then she glanced at Lafe, and ended, "If 'er leg was nailed to your bench, she wouldn't be any tighter here. Now eat, all of you, an' keep your mouths shut."

CHAPTER XXIX

PEG'S VISIT

One morning Bobbie sat down gravely some distance from Lafe, took up one of Milly Ann's kittens, and fell into troubled thought. After permitting him to be silent a few moments, the cobbler remarked,

"Anything on your mind, comrade?"