Love stories; Poor -- Fiction; Violinists -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"But you can, Peggy! You can, sure! Lots of times Lafe'd say, 'Now,
Jinnie, watch God and me!' And I watched, and sure right on the minute
came the money." She paused a moment, ruminating. "That money we got
the day he went away came because he prayed for it."
The girl was reverently earnest.
"Lafe's got a chance, all right," she pursued, keeping Peg's eye.
"More'n a chance, if--if--if----Oh, Peggy, we've got to pray!"
"I don't know how," said Peg, in stifled tones.
Jinnie's face lighted with a mental argument Lafe had thrown at her
in her moments of distrust. She was deep in despondency, but something
had to be done.
"Peg, you don't need to know anything about it. I didn't when I came
here. Lafe says----"
"What'd Lafe say?" cut in Peggy.
"That you must just tell God about it----" Jinnie lifted a white,
lovely face. "He's everywhere--not away off," she proceeded. "Talk to
Him just like you would to Lafe or me."
Mrs. Grandoken sunk lower in her chair.
"I wisht I'd learnt when Lafe was here. Now I dunno how."
"But will you try?" Jinnie pleaded after a little.
"You know 'em better'n I do, Jinnie," Peg muttered, dejectedly. "You
ask if it'll do any good."
Jinnie cleared her throat, coughed, and murmured:
"Close your eyes, Bobbie."
Bobbie shut his lids with a gulping sob, and so did Peg.
Then Jinnie began in a low, constrained voice:
"God and your angels hovering about Lafe, please send him back to the
shop. Get him out of jail, and don't let anybody hurt him. Amen."
"Don't let any chair hurt my beautiful cobbler," wailed Bobbie, in a
new paroxysm of grief. "Gimme Lafe an' my stars."
In another instant Peggy staggered out of the room, leaving the blind
boy and Jinnie alone.
As the door closed, Bobbie's voice rose in louder appeal. Happy Pete
touched him tenderly with a cold, wet nose, crawling into his arms
with a little whine.
Jinnie looked at her two charges hopelessly. She knew not how to
comfort them, nor could she frame words that would still the agony of
the child. Yet she lifted Bobbie and Happy Pete and sat down with them
on her lap.
"Don't cry, honey," she stammered. "There! There! Jinnie'll rock
you."
Her face was ashen with anxiety, and perspiration stood in large drops
upon her brow. Mechanically she drew her sleeve across her face.
"I'm going to ask you to be awful good, Bobbie," she pleaded
presently. "Lafe's being arrested is hard on Peg--and she's sick."
Bobbie burst in on her words.
"But they'll sit my cobbler in a wicked chair, and kill him, Jinnie.
Peggy said they would."
"You remember, Bobbie," soothed the girl, "what Lafe said about God's
angels, don't you?"
The yellow head bent forward in assent.
"And how they're stronger'n a whole bunch of men?"
"Yes," breathed Bobbie; "but the chair--the men've got that, an' mebbe
the angels'll be busy when they're puttin' the cobbler in it."
This idea made him shriek out louder than before: "They'll kill Lafe!
Oh, Jinnie, they will!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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