“It ain’t him, Jinnie, my Jew baby?” he murmured brokenly.
“Yes, ’tis,” and she laughed. “It’s your own little feller. I brought him to get a kiss from his daddy. Kiss him! Kiss him smack on the mouth, Lafe.”
And Lafe kissed his baby—kissed him once, twice, and three times, gulping hard after each caress. He would never have enough of those sweet kisses, never, never! And as his lips descended reverently upon the smooth, rose-colored 273 skin, Mr. Grandoken laughed, and Jinnie laughed, and the baby, too, wrinkled up his nose.
“Lafe,” Jinnie said tenderly, drawing the baby away, “I knew you wanted to see him; didn’t you?”
Lafe nodded. “An’ I’ll never be able to thank you for this, Jinnie.... Let me kiss him once more.... Oh, ain’t he beautiful?”
Just before the girl wrapped the boy again in the shortwood, she suggested,
“Lafe, what’s against taking him into the ‘Happy in Spite’? He’s happier’n any kid in the whole world, having you for a daddy and Peg for his mother.”
Jinnie thrust the baby’s plump hand through the bars, and Lafe, with tears in his eyes, shook it tenderly, then kissed it.
“Lafe Grandoken, Jr,” he whispered, “you’re now a member of the ‘Happy in Spite’ Club.”
And then Jinnie took the baby back to Peggy.