Bust 'Em Out

"Jinnie, ain't we ever goin' back to Peggy?" Bobbie asked one day, his eyes rolling upward. His small face was seamed with questioning anxiety.

The girl drew him to her lap.

How many times Jinnie had asked that question of herself! How she longed for Paradise Road, with its row of shacks, Peggy and the baby! Bobby knew how she felt by the way she squeezed his hand.

"Ain't we?" he asked again.

"Some time," answered Jinnie limply.

"Did the black man say we could go, Jinnie?" the boy demanded.

Jinnie patted his head comfortingly.

"I hope he'll take us home soon," she remarked, trying to put full assurance into her tones.

Bobbie zigzagged back to the divan, drew himself upon it, and Jinnie knew by his abstracted manner that he was turning the matter over in his busy little brain.

Two hours later, when Jordan Morse came in, the child was still sitting in the same position, and the man beckoned the girl into the other room.

"Grandoken's trial is to start this afternoon within an hour," he informed her. "You'll be here to-day and to-morrow. You see the court won't be long in proving the cobbler's guilt."

If he had expected her to cry, he was mistaken. She was past crying, seemingly having shed all of her tears.

"He didn't do it," she averred stubbornly. "I know he didn't."

In justice to Lafe, she always reiterated this.