"Put your arm around me, girl," which invitation Jinnie quickly accepted.
Then they two, so unlike, went slowly down the walk toward the tracks to Lafe Grandoken's home.
Jinnie's heart vied with a trip-hammer as they turned into Paradise Road. She did not fear the cobbler, but the thought of Peggy's harsh voice, her ruthless catechizing, worried her not a little. Nevertheless, she kept her arm about the boy, steadily drawing him on. When they came to the side door of the house, the girl turned the handle and walked in, leading her weary companion.
Resolutely she passed on to the kitchen, for she wanted the disagreeable part over first. She fumbled in hesitation with the knob of the door, and Peg, hearing her, opened it. At first, the woman saw only Jinnie, with Happy Pete by her side. Then her gaze fell upon the other child, whose blind, entreating eyes were turned upward in supplication.
"This is Bobbie," announced Jinnie, "and he's come to live with us, Peggy."
Poor Peggy stared, surprised to silence. She could find no words to fit the occasion.
"He hasn't any home!" Jinnie gasped for breath in her excitement. "Mag, a woman somewhere, beat him and he ran away and I found 'im. So he belongs to us now."
She was gaining assurance every moment. She hoped that Peggy was silently acquiescing, for the woman hadn't uttered a word; she was merely looking from one to the other with her characteristically blank expression.
"I'm going to give him half of Lafe, too," confided Jinnie, nodding her head toward the waiting child.
Then Peggy burst forth in righteous indignation. She demanded to know how another mouth was to be fed, and clothes washed and mended; where the brat was to sleep, and what good he was anyway.
"Do you think, kid," she stormed at Jinnie, "you're so good yourself we're wantin' to take another one worser off'n you are? Don't believe it! He can't stay here!"
Jinnie held her ground bravely.
"Oh, I'll start right out and sell wood all day long, if you'll let him stay, Peg."
A tousled lock of yellow hair hung over Bobbie's eyes.
"Oh, Peggy, dear, Mrs. Good Peggy, let me stay!" he moaned, swaying. "I'm so tired, s'awful tired. I can't find my mother, nor no place, and my stars're all out!"
Sobbing plaintively, he sank to the floor, and there the childish heart laid bare its misery. Then Jinnie, too, became quite limp, and forgetting all about "Happy in Spite," she knelt alongside of her newly acquired friend, and the two despairing young voices rose to the woman standing over them. Jinnie thrust her arms around the little boy.