“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. 206
“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!”