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Updated: June 3, 2025
But on the railroad tracks Virginia saw a man standing with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. "What'd you want of Lafe Grandoken?" asked the fellow in reply to her question. "I've come to see him," answered Jinnie evasively. "He's a cobbler and lives down with the shortwood gatherers there on Paradise Road. Littlest shack of the bunch! He ain't far from my folks. My name's Maudlin Bates."
"It ain't any of Maudlin's business who helps Jinnie," interrupted Lafe. "If you got any shoes needin' fixin', tote 'em over, Jasper." Bates left the shop and Lafe fell to work vigorously. Maudlin Bates stood at the path leading to the marshes. He was waiting for Jinnie to appear with her load of shortwood.
The days went on peacefully after the new arrangements for the shortwood. Every other day, at twelve o'clock, one of Theodore King's cars waited for Jinnie at the head of the path leading into the marsh. When the weather was stormy, Bennett, the chauffeur, took the wood, telling Jinnie to run along home.
Oh, how many days she had gone through a similar operation with a similar little sigh! It was a trying ordeal, that of collecting and selling kindling wood, for the men of Paradise Road took the best of the shortwood to be found in the nearer swamp and marsh lands, and oftentimes it was nearly noon before the girl would begin her sale.
Jinnie thought a long time. Presently she laughed a little, chuckling laugh. "I know how to get him in there!" "How?" asked Peggy, incredulously. "Why, everybody knows I've been a shortwood girl. I'll roll him up in a bundle " Peg's hand sought the little body under the covers protectingly. "Oh, I won't hurt him, Peg," assured Jinnie. "We'll wrap him up the first fine day!
Most of 'em's shortwood gatherers. When I found out about the man on the cross, I told it right out loud to 'em all. ... You're one of 'em. You're a Gentile, Jinnie." "I'm sorry," said the girl sadly. "Oh, you needn't be. Peg's one, too, but she's got God's mark on her soul as big as any of them women belongin' to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob I ain't sure but it's a mite bigger."
"I could fiddle more," Jinnie blurted radiantly. She remembered how sympathetically he had listened to her through the blizzard. He liked the fiddle! She went a little nearer him. "I'm trying to make a tune different from any I've ever done, and I can't always play well after lugging shortwood all day.... I'd love to deliver it the way you said." King stood gazing at her.
Her first glance at him brought the flushing consciousness that she was but a shortwood gatherer; the strap and its burden placed a great barrier between them. But his question about the fiddle, her fiddle, placed her again on equal footing with him. She permitted herself to smile. "I play every day. My uncle loves it, but my aunt doesn't," she answered naïvely. "And you're selling wood?"
"I dunno, but he's awful happy, now he's going to stay with us." "Call 'im 'Happy Pete'," said the cobbler, smiling, "an' we'll take 'im into our club; shall we, kid?" So Happy Pete was gathered that day into the bosom of the "Happy in Spite." With a sigh Jinnie allowed Lafe to buckle the shortwood strap to her shoulder.
The speaker grinned as the butcher took the string from the hook. Jinnie slipped the stem of the cobbler's rose between her white teeth, grasped the sausage in one hand and gripped the shortwood strap with the other. Then the man started a rollicking whistle, and Jinnie took a step or two. Every one in the place drew nearer.
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