“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. 258
“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.”