"I'll pick up the milk pans and empty 'em for you, first. Poor old things! They don't know they're going out of business! Let me look at your ladder, please. A man that works with a woman's farming implements ought to carry a big life insurance!"
Jenny laughed again, joyously. Then, entirely forgetting decorum, she wiped her eyes with her apron and said, "If I only knew what your wages were going to be I'd raise them, you are so funny! The ladder is in the shed. I think it's all right."
He looked about the shed in amazement at its cleanliness and order. "Holy Moses!" he thought, "does that little creature sweep and scrub this place and pile up this wood and kindling, skipping about on a crutch? And us great husky lubbers getting 'orders of merit' for doing our duty by the country. Wonder if Miss Jenny Lane has had any medals handed out to her? She can have mine when I get well enough acquainted to give it to her."
Jenny followed him out to the shed.
"Is the ladder quite safe?" she asked.
"Safe as a meeting-house."
"Then, as you go to the village, you'll see twin boys hanging over the gate at the next house, Mrs. Day's. Ask the red-haired, freckled one (his name is Alfinso) if he'll come up this afternoon and help you, for five cents. He'll hold the ladder, pick up the shingles or commit any crime if you just tell him that Jenny'll have fresh doughnuts for you and him at supper-time. Don't ask Alfonso, the dark-haired twin; he doesn't like work and doesn't like doughnuts."
"Well," said the stranger, wiping his hand on a potato sack, "I wasn't in the Salvation Army belt when they were distributing doughnuts to the boys and my mouth is fairly watering for one. My name's Rufus Holt, of Lawrence, Kansas." Here he held out his hand which Jenny took, stunned by the suddenness of his action. "I'm your hired man till this roof is fixed. You look to me like a grand little boss. I'll be back in an hour and I hope I don't get Alfinso and Alfonso mixed!"
"Creeping Jenny" has a method all its own of making its way upward and onward, silently, smoothly, under and over, betwixt and between obstacles. The slender little green vine climbs, not so much with strength, as with swiftness and grace, and accomplishes its growth in a miraculously short space of time. You can leave your garden rake against the barn door some warm night, and next morning Jenny will have crept up to the top of the handle, leaned over and flung down a few little fragrant blossoms here and there just to give you a hint of Nature's magic.
By a like process and another sort of magic, Jenny Lane crept into Rufus Holt's heart, which was a big lonesome one, howling with emptiness, at the time he began shingling her house. They came to know more of each other as the days went by. He and she, with Alfinso, ate luncheon together on the shed bench so that the day's labor need not be delayed by a trip to the village for Rufus. (At least that is what he said, and she said, and Alfinso said, and Mrs. Day said, and nobody doubted it but the postmistress.)