“Oh, angels! Eh?” interrupted the girl. “Yes, I sold my last two cents’ worth by saying what you told me—‘He gives His angels charge over thee’—and, zip! a woman bought the last bundle and gave me a cent more’n I charged her.”
“Good!” Lafe was highly pleased. “It’ll work every time, an’ to make a long story short, it works on boots an’ shoes, too.”
“Wood’s awful heavy,” Jinnie decided, irrelevantly.
“Sure,” soothed Lafe again. He hesitated a minute, drew his hand across his eyes, and continued, “An’, by the way, Jinnie––”
Jinnie’s receptive face caused the cobbler to proceed: 81
“I wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with Bates’ son Maudlin, if I was you.... He’s a bad lot.”
Jinnie’s head drooped. She flushed to her hair.
“I saw him to-day,” she replied. “He’s got wicked eyes. I hate boys who wink!”
A look of desperation clouded the fair young face, and the cobbler, looking at the slender girlish figure, and thinking the while of Maudlin Bates, suddenly put out his hand.
“Come here, lassie,” he said.