commenced Lafe, "I want you to be awful good to Peggy....
It's about her I'm goin' to speak."

Jinnie sank back on the tips of her toes.

"What about Peg? There isn't----"

"Dear Peggy," interrupted Lafe softly, his voice quick with tears,
"dear, precious Peggy!" Then as he bent over Jinnie and Jinnie bent
nearer him, Lafe placed his lips to her ear and whispered something.

She struggled to her feet, strange and unknown emotions rising in her
eyes.

"Lafe!" she cried. "Lafe dear!"

"Yes," nodded the cobbler. "Yes, if you want to know the truth, the
good God's goin' to send me an' Peg another little Jew baby."

Jinnie sat down in her chair quite dazed. Lafe's secret was much
greater than she had expected! Much!

"Tell me about it," she pleaded.

Keen anxiety erased the cobbler's smiling expression.

"Poor Peggy!" he groaned again. "She can't see where the bread's
comin' from to feed another mouth, but as I says, 'Peggy, you said the
same thing when Jinnie came, an' the blind child, an' this little
one's straight from God's own tender breast.'"

"That's so, Lafe," accorded Jinnie, "and, Oh, dearie, I'll work so
hard, so awful hard to get in more wood, and tell me, tell me when,
Lafe; when is he coming to us, the Jew baby?"

Lafe smiled at her eagerness.

"You feel the same way as I do, honey," he observed. "The very same
way!... Why, girlie, when Peg first told me I thought I'd get up and
fly!"

"I should think so, but--but--I want to know how soon, Lafe, dear."

"Oh, it's a long time, a whole lot of weeks!"

"I wish it was to-morrow," lamented Jinnie, disappointedly. "I wonder
if Peg'll let me hug and kiss him."

"Sure," promised Lafe, and they lapsed into silence.

At length, Jinnie stole to the kitchen. She returned with her violin
box and Milly Ann in her arms.

"Hold the kitty, darling," she said softly, placing the cat on his
lap. "She'll be happy, too. Milly Ann loves us all, Milly Ann does."

Then she took out the fiddle and thrummed the strings.

"I'm going to play for you," she resumed, "while you think about Peggy
and the--and--the baby."

The cobbler nodded his head, and wheeled himself a bit nearer the
window, from where he could see the hill rise upward to the blue,
making a skyline of exquisite beauty.

Jinnie began to play. What tones she drew from that small brown
fiddle! The rapture depicted in her face was but a reflection of the
cobbler's. And as he meditated and listene