“It’s more’n two years ago, now,” proceeded the cobbler presently, “an’ I was workin’ on one of them tall uptown buildin’s. Jimmy Malligan worked right alongside of me. We was great chums, Jimmy an’ me. One day the ropes broke on one of the scaffoldin’s—at least, that’s what folks said. When we was picked up, my legs wasn’t worth the powder to blow ’em up—an’ Jimmy was dead. ... But Peg says I’m just as good as ever.”
Here Mr. Grandoken took out his pipe and struck a match. “But I ain’t. ’Cause them times Peg didn’t have to work. We always had fires enough, an’ didn’t live like this. But, as I was sayin’, me an’ Peg just kinder lived in to-day. Now, when I hope that mebbe I’ll walk again, I’m always measurin’ up to-morrow––Peg’s the best woman in the world.” 73
Jinnie shivered as a gust of wind rattled the window pane.
“She makes awful good hot mush,” she commented.
“Anyhow,” went on Lafe, “I was better off’n Jimmy, because he was stone dead. There wasn’t any to-day or to-morrow for him, an’ I’ve still got Peggy.”
“And this shop,” supplemented the girl, glancing around admiringly.
“Sure, this shop,” assented Lafe. “I had clean plumb forgot this shop—I mean, for the minute—but I wouldn’t a forgot it long.”
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and set to work.
Neither girl nor man spoke for a while, and it wasn’t until Lafe heard Peg’s voice growling at one of Milly’s kittens that he ceased his tick-tack.
“You wouldn’t like to join my club, lass, would you?” he ventured.