"I wouldn't leave you, dear, not for any school on earth," she whispered. "Now I'm going to tell Mr. King so."
Jinnie sped along Paradise Road and into the nearest drug store. It took her a few minutes to find Theodore's number, and when she took off the receiver, she had not the remotest idea how to word her refusal. She only remembered Lafe's sad face and Bobbie's sharp, agonizing calling of her name.
"I want to speak to Mr. King," she said in answer to a strange voice at the other end of the wire.
Her voice was so low that a sharp reply came back.
She waited a minute and then another voice, a voice she knew and loved, said,
"I'm Jinnie Grandoken," Theodore heard. "I wanted to tell you I wouldn't go away from home ever; no, never! I wouldn't; I couldn't!"
"Don't you want to study?" Mr. King asked eagerly.
Jinnie shook her head as if she were face to face with him.
"I'm studying all the time," she said brokenly, "and I can't go away now. If they couldn't spare me one day, they couldn't all the time."
"Then I suppose that settles it," was the reluctant reply. "I hoped you'd be pleased, but never mind! I'll see you very soon."
"I told him!" said Jinnie, facing the cobbler. "Now, Lafe, don't ever think I'm going away, because I'm not. I've got some plans of my own for us all when I'm eighteen. Till then I stay right here."
At dinner Peg cut off a very large piece of meat and flung it on Jinnie's plate.
"I suppose you're plumin' yourself because you didn't go to school; but you needn't, 'cause nothin' could drag you from this shop, an' there's my word for it." Then she glanced at Lafe, and ended, "If 'er leg was nailed to your bench, she wouldn't be any tighter here. Now eat, all of you, an' keep your mouths shut."
One morning Bobbie sat down gravely some distance from Lafe, took up one of Milly Ann's kittens, and fell into troubled thought. After permitting him to be silent a few moments, the cobbler remarked,
Bobbie pushed the kitten from his lap. He crept to the cobbler's side slowly. Then, as he leaned his golden head against his friend, Lafe's arm fell about him.
"Tell me, laddie," insisted Mr. Grandoken.
"My stars're all gone out," faltered the boy sadly.
"What made 'em go out, Bob?... Can you tell?"