workin' on one of them tall uptown buildin's. Jimmy
Malligan worked right alongside of me. We was great chums, Jimmy an'
me. One day the ropes broke on one of the scaffoldin's--at least,
that's what folks said. When we was picked up, my legs wasn't worth
the powder to blow 'em up--an' Jimmy was dead. ... But Peg says I'm
just as good as ever."

Here Mr. Grandoken took out his pipe and struck a match. "But I ain't.
'Cause them times Peg didn't have to work. We always had fires enough,
an' didn't live like this. But, as I was sayin', me an' Peg just
kinder lived in to-day. Now, when I hope that mebbe I'll walk again,
I'm always measurin' up to-morrow----Peg's the best woman in the
world."

Jinnie shivered as a gust of wind rattled the window pane.

"She makes awful good hot mush," she commented.

"Anyhow," went on Lafe, "I was better off'n Jimmy, because he was
stone dead. There wasn't any to-day or to-morrow for him, an' I've
still got Peggy."

"And this shop," supplemented the girl, glancing around admiringly.

"Sure, this shop," assented Lafe. "I had clean plumb forgot this
shop--I mean, for the minute--but I wouldn't a forgot it long."

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and set to work.

Neither girl nor man spoke for a while, and it wasn't until Lafe heard
Peg's voice growling at one of Milly's kittens that he ceased his
tick-tack.

"You wouldn't like to join my club, lass, would you?" he ventured.

Jinnie looked up quickly.

"Of course I would," she said eagerly. "What kind of a club is it?"

The girl's faith in the cobbler was so great that if Lafe had
commanded her to go into danger, she wouldn't have hesitated.

"Tell me what the club is, Lafe," she repeated.

"Sure," responded Lafe. "Come here an' shake hands! All you have to do
to be a member of my club is to be 'Happy in Spite' an' believe
everythin' happenin' is for the best."

A mystified expression filled the girl's earnest blue eyes.

"I'm awful happy," she sighed, "and I'm awful glad to come in your
club, but I just don't understand what it means."

The cobbler paid no attention for some moments. He was looking out of
the window, in a far-away mood, dreaming of an active past, when
Jinnie accidentally knocked a hammer from the bench. Lafe Grandoken
glanced in the girl's direction.

"I'm happy in spite--" he murmured. Then he stopped abruptly, and his
hesitation made the girl repeat:

"Happy in spite?" with a rising inflection.