"I know you hate us, darling," Jinnie admitted, "but, Peg, I want to tell you this: it's ever so much easier to love folks than to hate 'em, and as long as the kitties're going to stay, I thought mebbe if you kissed 'em once--" Then she extended the kitten. "I brought you one to try on." "Well, Lord-a-massy, the girl's crazy!" expostulated Peg. "Keep the cats if you're bound to, you kid, but get out of this kitchen or I'll kiss you both with the broom." Jinnie disappeared, and Peggy heard a gleeful laugh as the girl scurried back to the shop. CHAPTER XVII JINNIE DISCOVERS HER KING'S THRONE Two years and almost half of another had passed since Jinnie first came to live with Lafe and Peggy Grandoken. These two years had meant more to her than all the other fifteen in her life. Lafe, in his kindly, fatherly way, daily impressed upon her the need of her studying and no day passed without planting some knowledge in the eager young mind. Her mornings were spent gathering shortwood, her afternoons in selling it, but the hours outside these money-earning duties were passed between her fiddle and her books. The cobbler often remarked that her mumbling over those difficult lessons at his side taught him more than he'd ever learned in school. Sometimes when they were having heart-to-heart talks, Jinnie confided to him her ambitions. "I'd like to fiddle all my life, Lafe," she told him once. "I wonder if people ever made money fiddling; do they, Lafe?" "I'm afraid not, honey," he answered, sadly. "But you like it, eh, Lafe?" "Sure!... Better'n anything." One day in the early summer, when there was a touch of blue mist in the clear, warm air, Jinnie wandered into the wealthy section of the town, hoping thereby to establish a new customer or two. Maudlin Bates had warned her not to enter his territory or to trespass upon his part of the marshland, and for that reason she had in the past but turned longing eyes to the hillside besprinkled with handsome homes. But Lafe replied, when she told him this, "No section belongs to Maudlin alone, honey.... Just go where you like." She now entered a large open gate into which an automobile had just disappeared, and walked toward the house. She paused to admire the exterior of the mansion. On the front, the porches were furnished with rocking chairs and hammocks, but no person was in sight. She walked around to the back, but as she was about to knock, a voice arrested her action. "Do you want to see somebody?" She turned hastily. There before her was her King, the man she had met on that memorable night more than two years before. He doffed his cap smiling, recognizing her immediately, and Jinnie flushed to the roots of her hair, while the shortwood strap slipped slowly from her shoulders. "Ah, you have something to sell?" he interrogated.