oman's, she scarcely knew what. She glanced from one to the other
as the cobbler lifted his head. He was always thanking some one in
some unknown place for the priceless gift of his woman.

"I'll 'Peggy dear' you whenever I feel like it, wife," he said
gravely, "for God knows you're awful dear to me, Peg."

Mrs. Grandoken ignored his speech, but when she returned from the
stove, her voice was a little more gentle.

"You can both stuff your innards with hot mush. You can't starve on
that.... Here, kid, sit a little nearer!"

So Virginia Singleton, the lame cobbler, and Peggy began their first
meal, facing a new day, which to Lafe was yesterday's to-morrow.

A little later Virginia followed the wheel chair into the cobbler's
shop. Peggy grumblingly left them to return to her duties in the
kitchen.

"Terrible cold day this," Lafe observed, picking up a shoe. "The
wind's blowin' forty miles the hour."

Virginia's next remark was quite irrelevant to the wind.

"I'm hoping Mrs. Peggy'll get the money she was talking about."

"Did she tell you she needed some?"

Virginia nodded, and when she spoke again, her tongue was parched and
dry.

"She said she had to have money to-night. I hope she gets it; if she
doesn't I can't stay and live with you."

"I hope she gets it, too," sighed the cobbler.

Of a sudden a thought seemed to strike him. The girl noticed it and
looked a question.

"Peggy's bark's worser'n her bite," Lafe explained in answer. "She's
like a lot of them little pups that do a lot of barkin' but wouldn't
set their teeth in a biscuit."

"Does that mean," Jinnie asked eagerly, "if she don't get the two
dollars to-night, Mrs. Peggy might let me stay?"

"That's just what it means," replied Lafe, making loud whacks on the
sole of a shoe. "You'll stay, all right."

The depth of Virginia's gratitude just then could only be estimated by
one who had passed through the same fires of deep uncertainty, and in
the ardor of it she flung her arms around the cobbler's neck and
kissed him.

* * * * *

When Lafe, with useless legs, had been brought home to his wife, she
had stoically taken up the burden that had been his. At her husband's
suggestion that he should cobble, Mrs. Grandoken had fitted up the
little shop, telling him grimly that every hand in the world should do
its share. And that was how Lafe Grandoken, laborer and optimist,
began his life's great work--o