Oh, how Jinnie wanted to do something to help them both! Now, at this moment, when there seemed a likelihood of being industriously useful, Jinnie loved them the more. She was going to work, and into her active little brain came the sound of pennies, and the glint of silver.
"I want to work, Peggy," she beseeched, "and I'll make a lot of money for you."
"Every hand ought to do its share," observed Peg, stolidly, glancing at the girl's slender fingers. They looked so small, so unused to hard work, that she turned away. An annoying, gripping sensation attacked her suddenly, but in another minute she faced the girl again.
"If you do it, miss, don't flounce round's if you owned the hull of Paradise Road, 'cause it'll be nothin' to your credit, whatever you do. You didn't make yourself."
At the door she turned and remarked, "You've got t'have a shoulder strap to hold the wood, an' you musn't carry too much to onct. It might hurt your back."
"I'll be careful," gulped Jinnie, "and mebbe I could help make the strap, eh, Lafe?"
An hour later Jinnie was running a long needle through a tough piece of leather. She was making the strap to peddle shortwood, and a happier girl never breathed.
Peg watched her without comment as Lafe fitted the strap about her shoulders. In fact, there was nothing for the woman to say, when the violet eyes were fixed questioningly upon her. Peggy thought of the hunger which would be bound to come if any hands were idle, so she muttered in excuse, "There's nothin' like gettin' used to a thing."
"It's a fine strap, isn't it, Lafe?" asked the girl, "It's almost as good as a cart."
"You can't use a cart in the underbrush," explained Lafe. "That's why the twig gatherers use straps."
"I see," murmured Jinnie.
When the cobbler and girl were once more alone together, they had a serious confab. They decided that every penny Jinnie brought in should go to enriching the house, and the girl's eyes glistened as she heard the shoemaker list over the things that would make them comfortable.
Most delightful thoughts came to endow the girl's mental world, which now reached from the cobbler's shop to the marsh, over a portion of the city, and back again. It was rosy-hued, bright, sparkling with the pennies and nickels she intended to earn. All her glory would come with the aid of that twig gatherer's leather strap. She looked down upon it with a proud toss of her head. Jinnie was recovering the independent spirit which had dominated her when she had wandered alone on the hills away to the north.