Rose O'Paradise

"I've got to think, and think quick," he broke out suddenly. "My God! I might have known she didn't belong in that cobbler's shop.... I'll go now.... Don't mention this to Theo."

As he was leaving, he said with curling lip: "I guess now you know my prospects you won't be so stingy. I'll have to have money to carry this through."

"All right," said Molly.

When she was alone, Molly's anger decreased. She had an ally now worth having. She smiled delicately as she passed up the stairs to her room, and the smile was brought to her lips because she remembered having begged Jordan to help her in this matter several times before. Then he had had no incentive, but to-day----Ah, now he would give her a divorce quietly! The social world in which she hoped to move would know nothing of her youthful indiscretion.

* * * * * That night Jinnie and Peg were bending anxiously over a basket near the kitchen stove. All that human hands and hearts could do had been done for the suffering barn-cat. He had given no sign of consciousness, his breath coming and going in long, deep gasps.

"He'll die, won't he, Peg?" asked Jinnie, sorrowfully.

"Yes, sure. An' it'll be better for the beast, too." Peg said this tempestuously.

"I'd like to have him live," replied Jinnie. "Milly Ann mightn't love him, but she got used to Happy Pete, didn't she?"

"This feller," assured Peggy, wagging her head, "won't get used to anything more on this earth."

"Poor kitty," mourned Jinnie.

She was thinking of the beautiful world, the trees and the flowers, and the wonderful songs of nature amidst which the dying animal had existed.

"I hope he'll go to some nice place," she observed sadly, walking away from Mrs. Grandoken.

Later, after cogitating deeply, Jinnie expressed herself to the cobbler.

"Lafe, Lafe dear," she said, "it's all true you told me, ain't it?... All about the angels and God?... The poor kitty's suffering awful. He's got the Christ too, hasn't he, Lafe?"

The man looked into the agonized young face.

"Yes, child," he replied reverently, "he's got the Christ too, same's you an' me. God's in everything. He loves 'em all."

That night the girl sat unusually long with paper and pencil. Just before going to bed she placed a paper on the cobbler's knee.

"I wrote that hurt kitty some poetry," she said shyly.

Lafe settled his spectacles on his nose, picked up the sheet, and read: "I'm nobody's cat and I've been here so long, In this world of sorrow and pain, I've no father nor mother nor home in this place, And must always stay out in the rain.