“I’d be happier if you would,” whispered Bobbie.
“Then I will! The fire, jumping out, didn’t hurt the cobbler one wee bit, but it burned the wicked men––” Jinnie paused, gathered a deep breath, and brought to mind Lafe’s droning voice when he had used the same words, “Burned ’em root and branch,” declared she.
Bobbie’s face shone with happiness.
“Isn’t it enough?” asked Jinnie, with tender chiding.
“Aren’t there nothin’ in it about Lafe?”
“Oh, sure!” Again she was at loss for ideas, but somehow words of their own volition seemed to spring from her lips. “Sure there is! There’s another hundred pages in that blessed book that says good men like Lafe won’t ever go into one of those chairs, never, never.... The Lord God Almighty ordered all those death chairs to be chopped up for kindling wood,” she ended triumphantly.
“Shortwood?” broke out Bobbie.
Unheeding the interruption, Jinnie pursued: “They just left a chair for wicked men, that’s all.”
Bobbie slipped to the floor and raised his hands.