Virginia refused to believe the startling words. She would have adored being called "dear." In Lafe's voice, great love rang out; in the woman's, she scarcely knew what. She glanced from one to the other as the cobbler lifted his head. He was always thanking some one in some unknown place for the priceless gift of his woman.
"I'll 'Peggy dear' you whenever I feel like it, wife," he said gravely, "for God knows you're awful dear to me, Peg."
Mrs. Grandoken ignored his speech, but when she returned from the stove, her voice was a little more gentle.
"You can both stuff your innards with hot mush. You can't starve on that.... Here, kid, sit a little nearer!"
So Virginia Singleton, the lame cobbler, and Peggy began their first meal, facing a new day, which to Lafe was yesterday's to-morrow.
A little later Virginia followed the wheel chair into the cobbler's shop. Peggy grumblingly left them to return to her duties in the kitchen.
"Terrible cold day this," Lafe observed, picking up a shoe. "The wind's blowin' forty miles the hour."
Virginia's next remark was quite irrelevant to the wind.
"I'm hoping Mrs. Peggy'll get the money she was talking about."
"Did she tell you she needed some?"
Virginia nodded, and when she spoke again, her tongue was parched and dry.
"She said she had to have money to-night. I hope she gets it; if she doesn't I can't stay and live with you."
"I hope she gets it, too," sighed the cobbler.
Of a sudden a thought seemed to strike him. The girl noticed it and looked a question.
"Peggy's bark's worser'n her bite," Lafe explained in answer. "She's like a lot of them little pups that do a lot of barkin' but wouldn't set their teeth in a biscuit."
"Does that mean," Jinnie asked eagerly, "if she don't get the two dollars to-night, Mrs. Peggy might let me stay?"
"That's just what it means," replied Lafe, making loud whacks on the sole of a shoe. "You'll stay, all right."
The depth of Virginia's gratitude just then could only be estimated by one who had passed through the same fires of deep uncertainty, and in the ardor of it she flung her arms around the cobbler's neck and kissed him.
* * * * * When Lafe, with useless legs, had been brought home to his wife, she had stoically taken up the burden that had been his. At her husband's suggestion that he should cobble, Mrs. Grandoken had fitted up the little shop, telling him grimly that every hand in the world should do its share. And that was how Lafe Grandoken, laborer and optimist, began his life's great work--of cobbling a ray of comfort to every soul entering the shack. Sometimes he would insist that the sun shone brighter than the day before; then again that the clouds had a cooling effect. But if in the world outside Lafe found no comfort, he always spoke of to-morrow with a ring of hope in his voice.