Rose O'Paradise

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 listened, Lafe felt that each tone of Jinnie's fiddle had a soul of its own--that the instrument was peopled with angel voices--voices that soothed him when he suffered beyond description--voices that now expressed in rhythmical harmony the peace within him. Jinnie was able to put an estimate on his moods, and knew just what comfort he needed most. Until that moment the cobbler's wife had seemed outside the charm of the beloved home circle. But to-day, ah, to-day!--Jinnie's bow raced over the strings like a mad thing. To-day Peggy Grandoken became in the girl's eyes a glorified woman, a woman set apart by God Himself to bring to the home a new baby.

Jinnie played and played and played, and Theodore in spirit-fancy stood beside her. Lafe thought and thought and thought, while Peggy walked through his day dreams like some radiant being.

"A baby----my baby, in the house," sang the cobbler's heart.

"A baby, our baby, in the house," poured from Jinnie's soul, and "Baby, little baby," sprang from the fiddle over and over, as golden flashes of the sun warms the earth. Truly was Lafe being revivified; truly was Jinnie! Theodore King! How infinitely close he seemed to her! How the memory of his smile cheered and strengthened her!

From the tip of the fiddle tucked under a rounded chin to the line of purple-black hair, the blood rushed in riotous confusion over the fiddler's lovely face. What was it in Lafe's story that had brought Theodore King so near?