Kitabı oku: «Pippin; A Wandering Flame», sayfa 4
"Yes!" Mr. Baxter looked serious. "I'm afraid, Pippin – "
"Don't be afraid, sir! Just watch me!" Pippin tested the pennies carefully and taking them up one by one on the blade of his jackknife, deposited them on the counter. "I've noticed along about this time every night – there they come! Don't say a word, only watch!"
He retired behind the counter as the door opened and two children came in, a boy and a girl. They were poorly dressed, and there was something furtive and slinking about their looks and manner, but they came forward readily, and the girl asked for a five-cent loaf of white bread, putting at the same moment five pennies on the counter, close beside those which already lay there. As Pippin was tying up the bread, the girl began to ask questions. How much was them cookies? Were they molasses or sugar? What was the price of the custard pie, and when was it baked?
"Baked this mornin'!" Pippin replied cheerfully. "Cost you a quarter, and worth a dollar. What – "
A piercing howl interrupted him. The tinkle of metal was heard, and the boy sprang back from the counter and danced about the shop, crying and spluttering, his fingers in his mouth. Pippin vaulted the counter in an instant.
"What's the matter, Bo?" he asked kindly. "Hurt your finger? Lemme see!" The boy clenched his fist, but Pippin forced the fingers open, not ungently. "Why, you've burnt 'em!" he announced. "My! my! that must hurt! How in the name – why, you must have made a mistake and took up some of Mr. Baxter's pennies. Yes, sir, that's what you done. Didn't you know that bakeshop pennies was hot? They be, sure thing! There goes Sissy!" as the girl, seizing her loaf, slipped noiselessly out of the door. "Now you foller her, Bo, and go home and tell your ma what I say. Bakeshop pennies is hot! Think you'll remember that? Here's something to help your mem'ry!"
Leading the boy to the door, he gave him a carefully modulated kick, and with a friendly, "So long, Bo!" returned to the shop.
"I've had my eye on them kids for two three days!" he explained. "Smart kids! If I met 'em in the city, I should say they was in trainin'. I'll set Father O'Brien on 'em; they go to his gospel shop. I see 'em there."
"I never should have thought it!" said the baker, and he shook his head sadly. "Those little kids! Why, the boy doesn't look to be more than eight years old, and the girl only a year or so older."
"That's the time to start 'em!" Pippin spoke with emphasis. "If you're aimin' to make a first-rate crook, you've got to start in early with him. But Father O'Brien'll see to 'em; he's smart as a jimmy, Father O'Brien is."
"We won't tell the wife!" said Mr. Baxter. "She is nervous, and 'twould ha'nt her, and keep her awake nights. One comfort, they're not Kingdom born, those kids. They belong to them French folks over by the dump, down Devildom way."
Weekday mornings Pippin spent mostly in the bakery, working, singing, whistling, all with a hearty will. After dinner he would take his wheel and go his way through the pretty shady streets of the country town, or out along the green roads that led from it in various directions. When he came to a promising looking corner with houses set within comfortable reach of one another, he would stop, and leaning on his wheel, would put up his shingle, as he called it: in other words, sing his grinding song. He had made it up, bit by bit, as the wheel turned, humming, under his hands. Here it is: but you should hear Pippin sing it!
Knives and scissors to grind, oh!
Have 'em done to your mind, oh!
Large and small,
Damaged and all,
Don't leave any behind, oh!
Knives and scissors to grind, oh!
Every specie and kind, oh!
Bring 'em to me,
And you will see
Satisfaction you'll find, oh!
"Yes, sir, made it my own self!" he replied to Elder Stebbins' questions on the song. "I don't know how I done it. I expect it was a kind of miracle. I sang the first line through two three times, and lo ye! the next one turned right up matchin' of it. Now that isn't nature, you know, but yet it's right, and it fits straight in. When a thing comes like that, I call it a miracle. What say?"
"Very interesting, my young friend! Do you – a – might it perhaps be better to substitute 'species' for 'specie'? The latter means, as you doubtless are aware, current coin; and – "
"Great!" said Pippin. "Current coin is what I'm after every time, so I get it honest. Specie'll do for me, Elder!"
Before he had sung the song through once, doors and windows would be opening, housewives peering out, children running to gather round the magic wheel, listening open-mouthed to the singer. It was all play to Pippin; wonderful, beautiful play.
"I tell you," he would say, "I tell you, seems though just to breathe was enough to keep gay on. Over there to Shoreham – I dunno – I expect the air got discouraged, some way of it. They'd open the windows, but the outside air was shy of comin' in – like the rest of us! But out here in the open – and things lookin' like this – green grass! I'm happy, and don't you forget it!"
Sometimes he got a lift on his way. Solitary drivers, plodding along the road, and seeing the trim, alert figure ahead stepping out briskly with its wheel, were apt to overhaul it, and after a glance at Pippin's face would most likely ask, "Goin' along a piece? Like a lift?" and Pippin, with joyous thanks, would climb eagerly in, all ready to begin a new chapter of human intercourse.
Once, so clambering, he found himself beside a tall man, brown-eyed and brown-haired, who drove a brown horse. Pippin's eyes were brown, too, but they danced and sparkled like running water; the stranger's eyes were like a quiet pool under shady trees, yet there was light in them, too.
"Goin' far?" he asked. His voice was grave, and he spoke slowly.
"Four Corners was what I'd aimed at," said Pippin, "but if you ain't goin' that way – ?"
"Goin' right past it, on my reg'lar route! I do business there to the store. I see you carry your trade with you, same as I do!" He jerked his head backward toward a neat arrangement of drawers and tiny cupboards which half filled his roomy wagon. "Nice trade, I expect?"
Pippin laughed his joyous laugh. "Real nice, only it isn't mine, not for keeps, I would say. 'Twas a – well, you might call it a legacy, and you wouldn't be far wrong. It come right to my hand when I was lookin' for a job, and I took it up then and there. Yes, sir, 'tis a good trade, and a man might do well at it, I don't doubt, but yet I don't feel it to be my own trade that I was meant for. So I go about seekin' for that one, and workin' at this one, and helpin' in the bakery – Baxter's to Kingdom; I'm boardin' there – helpin' there mornin's an' evenin's."
The brown eyes studied him carefully.
"About twenty-one years old, son? Twenty-two? I thought about there! Well, what have you been doin' up to now?"
Pippin told him, much as he had told Jacob Bailey. The brown man listened attentively, murmuring, "Sho!" or "Ain't that a sight!" occasionally to himself.
"So you see," Pippin concluded, "I want to be right down sure I've got the real thing before I settle down."
"Sure!" the other assented. "That's right!"
"And I keep feelin' at the back of my head that what I want is work with my hands; not this way, but farmin', or like that. The smell of the earth, and to see things growin', and – don't you know?"
The stranger assented absently.
"Elegant!" he said. "Farmin's elegant, when you've got the gift, but – ever thought of goin' to sea?" he asked; an eager look came into his face.
Pippin shook his head. "Not any!" he said. "I see the sea once, an' honest, it give me the creeps. Cold water mumblin' over the stones, like it wanted to eat 'em; and brown – kind o' like hair it was, floatin' about; and every now and then a big wave would come Sssss! up on the shore – well, honest, I run! I was a little shaver, but I've never wanted any more sea in mine!"
The brown man laughed. "You'd feel different, come to get out in blue water!" he said. "Smell the salt, and get the wind in your face, and – gorry! I'm a sea-farin' man," he said simply. "I spent good part of my life at sea. I'm runnin' a candy route at present – have a pep'mint! Do! 'Twon't cost you a cent, and it's real good for the stummick – but where I belong is at sea. Well! you can't do better than farmin', surely. Would you like a temp'ry job pickin' apples? I dunno but Sam – "
"There's more to it than that!" Pippin was speaking absently now; there was a wistful look in his eyes. "There's all that, the smell of the ground, and – and buttercups and – things; but there's more to it. There! You seem so friendly, I'll say it right out. I want to help!"
"That's right!" murmured the brown man. "Help! that's the stuff!"
"I want to help them that needs help. I want there shouldn't be so many kids in cellars, nor so many boys go wrong. Green grass! Tell you what!" Pippin's eyes were shining now, and his hands clenched. "I've been sayin' along, this month past, I'd forget all that time when I was a kid; I'd forget everything up to where I found the Lord. I kind o' think there was where I was wrong, mister – ?"
"Call it Parks!" said the brown man. "Calvin Parks is what I was christened, and I'd like to know your name, son."
"Pippin!"
"Meanin' – ?"
"Just Pippin!"
"Christian name or surname?"
"All the name there is!"
"But Pippin ain't no given name; it's an apple!"
"That's right! But it's all the name I've got. Fur back as I remember, Granny Faa called me it, and Dod Bashford called me 'pup' or 'snipe.' That's all I have to go by, so you see how 'tis!"
How should you remember anything more, Pippin? You were a baby when Granny Faa, then still able to travel, living in and out of the tilt cart which was home to her, found you by the roadside with your dying mother. The woman was almost past speech. "Don't roof me!" she muttered, flinging her arms out as the old gypsy lifted her. "Don't roof me!" and so died. Granny Faa felt no responsibility for the corpse. She rifled the body methodically, but found nothing of value. The shoes were better than her own, so she put them on. As for the baby, she took it partly because it smiled in her face and made something stir in that withered region where her heart was still alive, but more because her son wished it. Gypsy Gil (short for Gilbert), bent over the child delightedly; he snapped his fingers, and the baby crowed and jumped in the withered arms that held it. "Hell! ain't he a pippin?" said Gil. "Say, kid, ain't you a pippin?" "Goo!" said the baby. That was all. It was very simple. During the week Gil had still to live, he was "wrop up," as his mother said, in the child, and declared twenty times a day, with a new oath each time, that it was a pippin sure enough. Then, a knife thrust in a drunken scuffle sent Gil wherever he was to go; but he had named the baby. The old woman, mourning like a she-wolf, tended the child grimly because Gil had liked it; called it, for the same reason, by the name-that-was-no-name which he had given it. It was all simple enough, you see, had Pippin but known.
"That's mighty queer!" the brown man ruminated. "I don't know as ever I heard of any one without two names to him, and yet it sounds all right, too. Pippin! Well – well, son, I will say you look it. And now, here we are at the Poor Farm, and I'm goin' in here in my reg'lar way."
"Poor Farm! is this a Poor Farm?"
Ever since it came in sight, Pippin had been looking with a lover's eye at the broad low house of mellow brick, standing back from the road under its giant elms, its neat garden skirts gathered round it, its prim, trim gravel path leading to its white steps and green fan-lighted door.
"This a Poor Farm!" he repeated.
"Sure! Jacob Bailey's idea of one, and I wish there was more like it."
"Jacob Bailey!" cried Pippin. "Why, green grass! Why – why, ain't this great? He's a gentleman I'm acquainted with; he asked me to come and see him, and I promised I would. Well, if this ain't a leadin', I never see one. Mr. Parks, I'm pleased enough at meetin' up with you, just your own self; but add on your bringin' me here – why, I don't know how to thank you, sir!"
"Nothin' at all! nothin' at all!" said Calvin Parks. "I'm just as pleased myself. Think of your knowin' Jacob! Well! well! He's pure fruit and cane sugar, Jacob is, not a mite of glucose in his make-up. Here he comes this minute!"
Such a welcome as they had! Good Mr. Bailey, coming out to welcome his old friend, was quite overcome with pleasure and amazement at finding his new one, too. He had been telling the woman about him ever since that day, he assured Pippin. Only this morning he had said he wished that young feller would turn up, and she had said she wished to goodness he would for there was nothing in the house that would cut except Aunt Mandy's tongue.
"One of the inmates!" he explained. "Poor old lady! M' wife was a mite worked up, and she is cuterin', times when her rheumatism ketches her. Come in! Come in, the two of ye! Make ye welcome, Pippin, to Cyrus Poor Farm!"
He led them through the neat vestibule, through – with a glance of pride – the chilly splendor of the parlor, with its embossed plush rockers and lace curtains, into the kitchen.
"We'll find the woman here!" he said. "Kitchen's home, I always say."
It was a large, brick-paved room, with four broad windows facing south and east. Most of one side was taken up by a black cavern of a fireplace, which sheltered grimly the shining trimness of a modern cookstove. There was plenty of room for the settles on either side, and warm though the day was, two or three old people were sitting there, rubbing their chilly knees and warming their poor old hands. They looked up, and their faces sharpened into lively curiosity at sight of the visitors; but the girl who sat at the window never glanced at them, only crooned to the cat in her lap. The blind man in the corner, weaving willow baskets, listened, and his face lightened at the sound of the brown man's voice.
"Howdy, folks!" he said. "Well, I am a stranger, as you were saying. Say we have a pep'mint all round, what? Or a marshmallow? Uncle Ammi, I've got a treat for you, come all the way from Cyrus!"
While he gossiped cheerily with the old people, a sweet-faced woman came from an inner room and was introduced by Jacob Bailey as "m' wife."
"This is the young man I was tellin' you about, Lucy!" he said. "Cur'us he should happen along to-day, what say?"
"That's right! Only I should call it providential myself, Jacob. Be seated, won't you, Mr. – now Jacob told me your name! – Pippin – to be sure! Be seated, Mr. Pippin. We'll be having supper soon, and you'll set right down with us, I hope."
"Thank you, ma'am! If there was some knives I could be sharpenin', to earn my supper, sort of, I should be tickled to death to stay. Or if there's anything else you'd rather – what I aim at is to please, you see. Them scissors the young lady has in her lap don't appear to be what I'd call real sharp, now."
Mrs. Bailey laid her hand gently on the girl's fair head.
"Flora May can't have sharp scissors!" she said. "She's good as gold, but she's a little wantin', and she might cut off her lovely hair, mightn't you, Flora?"
The girl raised a sweet, vacant face. "I might cut off my lovely hair!" she repeated in a musical singsong. "My lovely, lovely hair! My – " The quiet hand touched her again, and she was silent.
"After supper we'll have some singin'!" she said. "Flora May admires to sing."
"Does she?" Pippin looked earnestly at the young face, pure and perfect in form and tint. "It's like a lamp when you've blown it out!" he thought.
Now Mrs. Bailey brought an apronful of knives and scissors. Pippin retreated to the yard where he had left his wheel, and was soon grinding and singing away, oblivious of all else save flying wheel and shining steel. Glancing up after a while, he saw all the inhabitants of the Poor Farm gathered in the doorway, listening; he paid little heed; folks always listened. That was the way the Lord had given him, to pay folks for bein' so pleasant to him as they always was. He was real thankful.
"Look at the aidge on this knife, will you? Hardly you can't tell which is it, and which is air; see?"
He broke out into a wild, sweet air:
"Oh! carry me 'long!
Dar's no more trouble for me.
I's gwine away to a better land,
Where all de niggers am free.
Long, long hab I worked,
I'b handled many a hoe;
I'll turn my eye before I die,
And see de sugar cane grow."
Something moved near him. He glanced down and saw the girl Flora May. She had crept nearer and nearer, till now she was almost at his feet. She sat, or rather crouched, on the ground, graceful as a creature of the woods, her blue print gown taking the lovely lines of her figure, her masses of fair hair, neatly braided, wound round and round her head. Such a pretty head! Just a little too small, poor Flora May! not for grace, but for other things. Looking at her, Pippin saw, and wondered to see, the face which he had likened to a dead lamp, now full of light, the pale cheeks glowing, the red lips parted, the blue eyes shining.
Yet somehow – what was the matter? They did not shine as other eyes shone; those brown ones, for instance, of the brown man towering in the doorway, or the twinkling gray eyes of Jacob Bailey.
"The lamp's burnin'," said Pippin, "but yet it's went wrong, some ways, but even so – green grass! she's a pictur!"
Coming to the end of his song, he smiled and nodded at the upturned face.
"Sing more for Flora May!" cried the girl. "Sing more!"
"Sure!" said Pippin. "Wait till I get a start on this aidge, Miss Flora May – Now! Here's what'll please you, I expect:
"Joseph was an old man,
An old man was he;
He married sweet Mary,
The Queen of Galilee.
"As they went a-walking
In the garden so gay,
Maid Mary spied cherries
Hanging over yon tree.
"Mary said to cherry tree,
'Bow down to my knee,
That I may pluck cherries
By one, two, and three.'"
A long way back to the cellar, and Granny Faa crooning over her black pot – in her best mood, be sure, or she would not be singing the Cherry Tree Carol. A far longer way back to an English lane in early summer, the gypsy tilt halted under a laden cherry tree, the gypsy mother singing to her little maid as she dangled the cherries over her head. A long, long road to go, and yet as yesterday, as a watch in the night.
"O eat your cherries, Mary,
O eat your cherries now,
O eat your cherries, Mary,
That grow upon the bough." —
"Now, Mr. Pippin," called Mrs. Bailey from the doorway, "it's plain to be seen there'll be no supper in this house till you give over singin'. I'm full loath to ask you to stop, but my cakes have to be eat hot, or they're no good."
CHAPTER V
CYRUS POOR FARM
ANOTHER lifelong possession for Pippin was that first supper at Cyrus Poor Farm. "I never forget a good meal!" he was wont to say. "It's one of the gifts, or so I count it; we've no call to forget 'em, just because we've eat 'em up. I think about 'em oftentimes, travelin', and enjoy 'em over again."
The long table was set in the wide doorway of the shed, "for coolth," Mrs. Bailey said. All around were piles of fragrant wood, birch and oak, with here and there a precious little store of apple wood, fruit of Jacob's thrifty pruning and thinning. The table itself, in the full light of the westering sun, glowed with many colors: rosy pink of boiled ham, dull brown of baked potatoes, rich russet of doughnuts, all set off by the vivid red of the Turkey cotton tablecloth.
Pippin drew a long breath as he surveyed his plate, heaped with the solids of this repast, the lighter eatables ranged round it in nappies shaped like a bird's bath. "Lord, make me thankful!" he ejaculated. "If I wasn't thankful, Mr. Bailey, sir, I'd ask you to take me by the scruff and heave me out, I would so!"
"Well, son, well!" responded Jacob comfortably. "We aim to set a good table, m' wife an' I; glad it suits you. You see," he added, "we have advantages over many other institutions. Some of our inmates is payin' boarders, sir, payin' boarders, and behooves us set palatable food before 'em. Why, some of us pays as high as two dollars a week, don't we?" He smiled round the table. Pippin flung a quick glance, saw two sharp noses proudly lifted, two pairs of eyes gleaming with satisfaction, while the serene dignity of the blind man's countenance proclaimed him third of the paying boarders.
"I've allers paid where I boarded!" said Miss Lucilla Pudgkins.
"I would scorn to do otherwise!" said Aunt Mandy Whetstone.
"And others that doesn't pay in money pays in help!" Jacob Bailey went on calmly; "so you see we're all comfortable! A little more of the ham, Pippin? Pass your plate!"
"I don't know," said Pippin, complying, "I don't really know as I ever eat a ham to compare to this, Mr. Bailey. It's – it's rich, that's what it is!"
A new voice spoke from the bottom of the table, that of a fat old man with a game leg. "I claim," he said huskily, as if there were crumbs in his throat, "that it's the second best ham I've ever ate here."
"The third best!" said the blind man calmly. "The fire got low on me one night, and the smoke was checked. We had a ham last year and one five years ago that was some better than this."
"Green grass!" ejaculated Pippin in amazement. "Do you mean to tell me – "
"We're right proud of Mr. Brand here to the Farm!" said Mrs. Bailey gently. "Wantin' his sight has give him wonderful powers of smell and taste – and touch, too. He has smoked our hams and bacon for twenty years, haven't you, Mr. Brand?"
"I have, ma'am!" said the blind man proudly.
"We make good profit out'n 'em," said Jacob. "Far and near, folks wants our hog p'dooce. Mr. Brand is money in the bank for the Farm and for himself, too."
As they left the table, a little cold hand was slipped into Pippin's.
"Sing!" said the girl. "Please sing for Flora May!"
"Why, sure!" Pippin was beginning; but Jacob Bailey broke in kindly but firmly:
"Not the minute he's finished his supper, he can't sing, Flora May!" he said. "Beside, I promised old Mr. Blossom to fetch Pippin in to see him."
"Old Mr. who?" cried Pippin.
"He said you'd know the name," chuckled Jacob. "This way, Pippin! He's pretty feeble, the old man is. Keeps his bed mostly, now."
For one moment Pippin hung back. Another! First Nipper, and now – Old Man Blossom, too! Old boozer, old snipe! Was he goin' to meet up with these folks right along, think? Wouldn't he ever get rid of 'em?
"Shut up! If the Lord can stand 'em, I expect you can!" and Pippin followed Mr. Bailey into a clean bare little room, where, propped on pillows, lay a clean old man. He looked eagerly up as Jacob entered. "You got him with you?" he asked querulously. "You got Pippin? I heard his voice – "
"You did, Daddy Blossom!" Pippin advanced and took the hand that was plucking nervously at the coverlet. "You heard Pippin, and now you see him! Well! well! And who ever thought of meetin' up with you here, Daddy? And sick, too! but if I had to be sick, I wouldn't ask no pleasanter place – " He turned to smile at Jacob Bailey, but Jacob had disappeared, and the door was closing softly.
"Pardoned out!" whispered the old man in his weak fretful voice. "Pardoned out, 'count of age and sickness. I ain't a well man, Pippin; my vitals is all perished; but that ain't what I want to say. I want you to help me! Say you'll help me, Pippin! I was always friends with you over There – " he nodded vaguely – "and now I'm old and sick, you'll help me, won't you?"
"Sure!" Pippin drew a stool beside the bed and sat down. "Put a name to it, Old Man! What can I do for you?"
"Find my little gal, Pippin, my Mary: you rec'lect her? Sure you do! She used to bring me candy, and poke it in betwixt the bars with her little hand – flowers too, she'd bring: sure you rec'lect little Mary, Pippin?"
Pippin did not, but there was no need of saying so.
"What about her, Old Man?"
"I want her! I ain't a well man, nor yet I ain't goin' to be well, and I want my little gal; I want you to find her, Pippin, and bring her to me."
"Sure!" said Pippin comfortably. "Where would I be likely – "
"I don't know!" cried the old man wildly. "That – " he gave a brief and vivid sketch of his wife's character – a wholly inaccurate sketch – "never would tell me where she sent her. She died herself, and a good job, too, and she sent word to me that Mary was well and doin' well, but now she'd got shet of me she was goin' to keep her shet. Now what a way that was to talk to a father! If little Mary knowed where I was, she'd come like a shot, but she don't know, nor I don't know – You find her, Pippin! You rec'let the little gal: you'll find her, won't you?"
"Sure!" said Pippin. For some moments he sat absently, running his fingers through his brown curls. Taking out the little file, he considered it unseeingly, tried to whistle a tune on it, and failing, returned it to its hiding place. Then, waking from his reverie, he put the old man through a sharp examination. The answers were feeble and uncertain, but he learned something. Eighteen year old, or mighty nigh it. Yes, red hair, or – naw! it might be darker by now, like her ma's was; color of – there! 'member old Mis' Jennings that lived just over the way from There? Well, sir, she had a heifer, kind o' red brown, like a hoss chestnut when you break it open; and her skin the white of one, too, kind o' soft and creamy; and her eyes like her'n too (the heifer's, Old Man Blossom meant), big and soft and blue with a kind of brown in 'em too – there! he'd know her, Pippin would, by the dimple right corner of her little mouth. Cur'us thing that was. When she wasn't more than a baby, 'bout two year old, he gave her a little sunshade – she see her Ma's and hollered for it, and he said she should have one of her own; pink it was, and she carried it like the Lady of the Land, sir. But bimeby she tumbles down, and the p'int of it went right through her cheek. That's right; instead of a scar, it made a dimple, paint him sky blue striped if it didn't. Prettiest little gal – hair would curl round your finger like 'twas a stick —
The whisper broke into crying, and Pippin had to soothe him and sing "The Factor's Lady, or the Turkish Garland," all through to restore tranquillity. But when Pippin rose to go, the old man clutched him with trembling fingers.
"Whisper!" he said. "Whisper, Pippin! The way you go to work – the way I'd go to work if I wasn't perished in my vitals" – he consigned his vitals to a warm region – "is, take Brand along!"
"Brand?" repeated Pippin.
"The blind man! he has eyes in his fingers. He can – he can tell the way the wind blew yesterday by feelin' of it to-day. If I'd had Brand I'd never been nabbed, and I'd be rollin' in gold to-day, and goin' in my automobile to find my little gal. But you get Brand along, Pippin! talk him round first, he's never been in the sportin' line, but – "
"Hold on! hold on!" Pippin loosed the clutching hands gently, and laid the poor old sinner, still gasping and whispering back on the pillow. "Old Man, you're makin' one big mistake. I'm not in the line any more; I guess not!" He threw back his head and laughed joyously. "You didn't know I found the Lord, did you? Well, I have, and there's no more sport in mine. But – I'll tell you! I'm runnin' a wheel at present, knife-grindin', you know. Why – I've got Nipper's wheel! Nipper was a pal of yours, wasn't he?"
"Nipper's wheel? Where's Nipper? Is he here?"
"He's dead, and before he went he gave me his wheel. It's a real handy – what now?"
He paused, for the old man, after staring at him a moment, broke into a fit of cackling, wheezing laughter.
"Nipper's wheel!" he gasped. "He's got Nipper's wheel, and he's found the Lord, and he isn't in the line no more! Gorry to hemlock, this is rich! You took me in complete, Pippin, you did so! Go on! You're all right!"
He grew purple in the face, and his eyes rolled. Pippin stepped to the door.
"Mr. or Mrs. Bailey!" he called quietly. "Mr. Blossom is having a fit!"
Mrs. Bailey, hastening in, surveyed the situation with practised eyes; lifted the patient, thumped his back gently, administered remedies, enjoined silence.
"You've ben talkin' too much, Mr. Blossom; it always brings on a spasm, and you hadn't ought to. Now lay down and take a nap, that's a good soul."
Obeying a glance of her kind gray eyes, Pippin slipped out, leaving the old man still gasping and gurgling. Many more of them kind, Pippin reflected, would carry the old geezer off, sure thing. He was on the blink, no two ways to that. "Loony too! Hear him laffin' fit to bust when I told him Nipper was dead! Now what do you know about that? That's loony, you see, that is! Behooves me find that little gal pooty quick if I'm goin' to find her. And how – in – Moses' meal-chist – am I goin' to find her?"
Pondering deeply, he went back into the kitchen. The table had been cleared and covered with its decent between-meals cloth of red and white check; beside it, facing the door, sat Miss Amanda Whetstone and Miss Lucilla Pudgkins, diligently mending stockings. These ladies, as has been seen, were paying boarders, and "demeaned themselves accordin'," as they would have said. They helped Mrs. Bailey in housework, mending, etc., but always with a touch of condescension and the understanding that it was "to accommodate." In person they were well contrasted. Miss Whetstone was a thin active little woman, with eyes like black glass and thin lips puckered in a sub-acid smile. She was always neat as wax, in dresses of black and white striped print, the lines so near together that they seemed to waver constantly. ("Throw her away!" Flora May often besought her "Uncle Bailey." "Please throw her away! She dazzles!") But every one knew Aunt Mandy had a black silk in her trunk, and a tatting collar that the minister's wife might have been glad to possess.
Miss Lucilla Pudgkins was billowy in figure and was addicted to purple print, with a string tied round the middle to show that she knew where the waist line ought to be. Her face might have been made by a clever boy out of a large red apple; and if Aunt Mandy's eyes were like glass, Miss Lucilla's were like china, two blue china buttons plumped into the red, on either side of the queerest button of a nose that ever was seen, Pippin thought. She wore a rather pathetic "front," which was seldom quite straight; in fact, she was a pathetic figure altogether, poor Miss Lucilla, but she did not know it, so all was well. She never forgot that at sixteen she had been Queen of the May at a Sunday school festival, and her trunk still held, under the scanty stock of petticoats and aprons, the white muslin frock of her great day. Miss Lucilla was a little greedy, and somewhat foolish, though not so foolish as Aunt Mandy thought her; the attitude of the two towards each other was usually an armed truce, except on occasions of general conflict, when they never failed to combine against the common enemy – usually Mr. Wisk, the fat man, who was greedy too.
