Bobbie gave a delighted squeal.

"Now I'll have something else to love, won't I?" he gurgled.

Jinnie hoped so! But she hadn't yet received Peg's consent to keep the family, so when the little boy was dressed and she had combed her hair and dressed herself, they went into the shop, where the cobbler met them with a smile.

"Peg's mad," Jinnie observed with a comprehensive glance at Mr.

Grandoken.

"Quite so," replied Lafe, grinning over the bowl of his pipe. "She had frost on her face a inch thick when she discovered them cats. I thought she'd hop right out of the window."

"She says I must throw 'em away," ventured Jinnie.

"Cluck! Cluck!" struck Lafe's tongue against the roof of his mouth, and he smiled. Jinnie loved that cluck. It put her in mind of the Mottville mother hens scratching for their chickens.

"Hain't she ever said anything like that to you before, la.s.s?" the cobbler suggested presently.

"She said it about me," piped in Bobbie.

"An' about Happy Pete, too," added Lafe.

"I bet I keep 'em," giggled Jinnie.

"I'll bet with you, kid," said the cobbler gravely.

"I want to see 'em!" Bobbie clamored with a squeak.

But he'd no more than made the statement before the door burst violently open and Peg stood before them. Her ap.r.o.n was gathered together in front, held by one gripping hand; something moved against her knees as if it were alive. In the other hand was Milly Ann, carried by the nape of her neck, hanging straight down at the woman's side, her long yellow tail dragging on the floor. The woman looked like an avenging angel.

"I've come to tell you folks something," she imparted in a very loud voice. "Here's this blasted ragtail, that's went an' had this batch of five cats. Now I'm goin' to warn y' all----"

Bobbie interrupted her with a little yelp.

"Let me love one, Peggy, dear," he begged.

"I'm goin' to warn you folks," went on Peg, without heeding the child's interjection, "that--if--you don't want their necks wrung, you'd better keep 'em out of my way."

Saying this, she dropped the mother cat with a soft thud, and without looking up, dumped the kittens on top of her, and stalked out of the room.

When Jinnie appeared five minutes later in the kitchen with a small kitten in her hand, Peg was stirring the mush for breakfast.

"You hate the kitties, eh, Peg?" asked Jinnie.

The two tense wrinkles at the corners of Mrs. Grandoken's mouth didn't relax by so much as a hair's line.

"Hate 'em!" she snapped, "I should say I do! I hate every one of them cats, and I hate you, too! An' if y' don't like it, y' can lump it. If the lumps is too big, smash 'em."

"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-ma.s.sy, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 trespa.s.s 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.

Jinnie's tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. She had never completely forgotten him, and his smile was a delightful memory. Now as he watched her quizzically, all her former admiration returned.

"Well, well," laughed the man, "if this isn't my little violin girl.

It's a long time since I saw you last.... Do you love your music as much as ever?"

Her first glance at him brought the flushing consciousness that she was but a shortwood gatherer; the strap and its burden placed a great barrier between them. But his question about the fiddle, her fiddle, placed her again on equal footing with him. She permitted herself to smile.

"I play every day. My uncle loves it, but my aunt doesn't," she answered navely.

"And you're selling wood?"