Rose O'Paradise Part 64

to put my beautiful Lafe in?"

Jinnie's mind went back to the teachings of the cobbler, and the slow, sweet, painful smile intermingled with her agony. Again and again the memory of the words, "He hath given his angels charge over thee,"

swelled her heart to the breaking point. She wanted to believe, to feel again that ecstatic faith which had suffused her as Maudlin Bates pulled her curls in the marsh, when she had called unto the Infinite and Theodore had answered.

Peg needed Lafe's angels at that moment. They all needed the comfort of the cobbler's faith.

"Peg," she began, "your man'd tell you something sweet if he could see you now."

Peg ceased writhing, but didn't lift her face. Jinnie knew she was listening, and continued:

"Haven't you heard him many a time, when there wasn't any wood in the house or any bread to eat, tell you about--about----"

Down dropped the woman's hands, and she lifted a woebegone face to her young questioner.

"Yes, I've heard him, Jinnie," she quavered, "but I ain't never believed it!"

"But you can, Peggy! You can, sure! Lots of times Lafe'd say, 'Now, Jinnie, watch G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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:

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d's angels, don't you?"

The yellow head bent forward in a.s.sent.

"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!"

"They can't!" denied Jinnie, rigidly. "They can't! Listen, Bobbie."

The wan, unsmiling blind face brought the girl's lips hard upon it.

"I want to know all about the death chair," he whimpered stubbornly.

"Bobbie," she breathed, "will you believe me if I tell you about it?"

"Yes," promised Bobbie, snuggling nearer.

"Hang on to Pete, and I will tell you," said Jinnie.

"I'm hangin' to 'im," sighed Bobbie, touching Pete's s.h.a.ggy forelock.

"Tell me about the chair."

Jinnie was searching her brain for an argument to satisfy him. She wouldn't have lied for her own welfare--but for Bobbie--she could feel the weak, small heart palpitating against her arm.

"Well, in the first place," she began deliberately, "Peg doesn't know everything about murders. Why, Bobbie, they don't do anything at all to men like Lafe. Why, a cobbler, dear, a cobbler could kill everybody in the whole world if he liked."