l
kitten in her hand, Peg was stirring the mush for breakfast.

"You hate the kitties, eh, Peg?" asked Jinnie.

The two tense wrinkles at the corners of Mrs. Grandoken's mouth didn't
relax by so much as a hair's line.

"Hate 'em!" she snapped, "I should say I do! I hate every one of them
cats, and I hate you, too! An' if y' don't like it, y' can lump it. If
the lumps is too big, smash 'em."

"I know you hate us, darling," Jinnie admitted, "but, Peg, I want to
tell you this: it's ever so much easier to love folks than to hate
'em, and as long as the kitties're going to stay, I thought mebbe if
you kissed 'em once--" Then she extended the kitten. "I brought you
one to try on."

"Well, Lord-a-massy, the girl's crazy!" expostulated Peg. "Keep the
cats if you're bound to, you kid, but get out of this kitchen or I'll
kiss you both with the broom."

Jinnie disappeared, and Peggy heard a gleeful laugh as the girl
scurried back to the shop.

CHAPTER XVII

JINNIE DISCOVERS HER KING'S THRONE

Two years and almost half of another had passed since Jinnie first
came to live with Lafe and Peggy Grandoken. These two years had meant
more to her than all the other fifteen in her life. Lafe, in his
kindly, fatherly way, daily impressed upon her the need of her
studying and no day passed without planting some knowledge in the
eager young mind.

Her mornings were spent gathering shortwood, her afternoons in selling
it, but the hours outside these money-earning duties were passed
between her fiddle and her books. The cobbler often remarked that her
mumbling over those difficult lessons at his side taught him more than
he'd ever learned in school. Sometimes when they were having
heart-to-heart talks, Jinnie confided to him her ambitions.

"I'd like to fiddle all my life, Lafe," she told him once. "I wonder
if people ever made money fiddling; do they, Lafe?"

"I'm afraid not, honey," he answered, sadly.

"But you like it, eh, Lafe?"

"Sure!... Better'n anything."

One day in the early summer, when there was a touch of blue mist in
the clear, warm air, Jinnie wandered into the wealthy section of the
town, hoping thereby to establish a new customer or two.

Maudlin Bates had warned her not to enter his territory or to trespass
upon his part of the marshland, and for that reason she had in the
past but turned longing eyes to the hillside besprinkled with handsome
homes.

But Lafe replied, when she told him this, "N