Kitabı oku: «Pippin; A Wandering Flame», sayfa 5

The two ladies looked up eagerly as Pippin entered. How was Mr. Blossom? Miss Whetstone asked. He sounded something awful. Was it the death spasm, did Mr. Pippin think? They had been expecting it any day, and wishing his folks would come. Wasn't it awful?

"He's all right!" Pippin reassured her. "Choked up a bit, but Mis' Bailey knows how to handle him. He'll rest easy now, poor old skeezicks. How long has he ben this way, ladies?"

"Sit down, do, Mr. Pippin!" Miss Whetstone hastened to make room for him beside her. "That cheer is comfortable; set right down, now do so! He has been having those spasms ever since he come, a month and more ago, but none so bad as this. Be you kin to him?"

"Me? Not much!" Pippin shook his head vigorously.

"I only asked because one likes to know, you know, about the folks one has to associate with. Of course you can keep yourself to yourself, and oftentimes so do, but any one ought to be sociable when they can, I claim."

"Sure thing!" murmured Pippin absently, his eyes glancing over the speaker's head to where Flora May sat rocking in her corner, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on him with a curious intentness. She seemed to be calling him, he thought, though she made no sound. He nodded, with a friendly glance which said "Presently!" Impossible to go at this moment, for Miss Whetstone evidently had more to say. She was bridling, and making little clucking noises in her throat, expressive (to herself, at least), of delicacy of feeling. Now speech came, preluded by a genteel titter, and accompanied by a glance round the room, which took in the blind man quietly whittling splints in his own special corner, and Flora May, rocking by the window, the latter with a compassionate depreciatory shrug of Miss Whetstone's shoulders.

"We aim to be as select here as circumstances allow," said the lady. "Of course it is a town institution, I am well aware of that; but Cyrus is a select neighborhood, and there's no one feels any call to take boarders except Mr. Bailey. You can see for yourself how it is, Mr. Pippin. The house is large and his own family small. He is well connected, Jacob is; his mother was own cousin to mine, and so – we thought, me and Miss Pudgkins, we'd like you to understand just how we come to be here. Not but what we could of went anywhere we pleased, if we had pleased!"

Pippin was aware of a certain wistfulness in the two pairs of eyes fixed on him. Now wouldn't that give you a pain? Poor old ladies!

"I bet you could, ma'am!" he responded heartily. "I expect you could pass all your time visitin' round, and find your welcome runnin' ahead of you like a houn' dog. But if you searched the country over, I bet you wouldn't find as pleasant a place as this. You show your taste, is what I would say."

The wistful eyes brightened as they exchanged glances. There was a point to make with this young man; it had to be made with every newcomer. People must know that they were here for convenience' sake, and that alone!

"I knew he would understand!" cried Miss Pudgkins. "He has that way. I see it first thing. And bein' as it is, Mr. Pippin, we try to keep up the tone, you see. Now Mr. Blossom – you say he's no kin to you? Well, to speak my mind – and Miss Whetstone holds with me – Mr. Blossom is not just the kind Cyrus folks is accustomed to. Has he – has he led a good life, are you aware?"

Pippin smiled at her. "Well, no, lady, he ain't; not exactly to call it good, you know; not what you would call good, though there never was as much harm in the Old Man as in lots of others. But anyway," he added, "he's on the blink now, you see, liable to croak 'most any day, I should judge, so it don't so much matter, does it?"

"Liable to – I beg your pardon?"

"I beg yours. No expression to use to ladies. Pass away is what I would say. I expect his trick is about up, what say? Dandy place to pass away in, too, when your time's come. Excuse me, ladies, I see Mr. Bailey – "

Pippin saw also his opportunity of escape, and with a little bow of apology, and appreciation, slipped out of the door, thinking to join his host who had just walked past it. But Jacob Bailey had already disappeared in the shed, and it was Flora May's turn. She had followed Pippin, and now stood before him, looking up at him with clear, lovely, empty eyes: empty, yet with that curious shining intentness he had noticed before.

"Sing now for Flora May!" said the girl.

"I will!" Pippin assured her. "Just the moment Mrs. Bailey gets through with Mr. Blossom, we'll have us a reg'lar singsong, we will so. Real fond of singin', ain't you, Miss Flora May? Say, that's a dandy necklace you have on! Them beads are carved elegant, they sure are."

Flora May lifted the beads and glanced carelessly at them. They were of some hard nut wood, each one adorned with flowers and fruit in delicate carving: a pretty ornament enough.

"Uncle Brand made them for me," she said. "Take them!" She had slipped the necklace off and was pressing it into Pippin's hand. He took it and examined it admiringly, then put it gently back over the girl's head.

"I thank you a thousand times!" he said. "I couldn't wear 'em myself, not travelin' like I am, you see, and I like to see 'em round your neck, they look so pretty. It's young ladies ought to wear joolry, you know."

He smiled at her, but her eyes met his anxiously.

"You are not goin' away?" said the girl. "You are goin' to stay? I'll give you my eagle feathers if you will stay. I'm tired of the folks here."

"Now what a way that is to talk! You're just jokin' though, I see. It would be a joke if you was tired of Mr. and Mrs. Bailey, wouldn't it now?"

"I'll give you the white duck, if you'll stay!" she went on in her sweet monotonous voice, which yet was strangely eager. "Uncle Bailey gave it to me, it's mine. I'll give you everything I've got if you'll stay."

At this moment, to Pippin's infinite relief, Mr. Bailey emerged from the shed. He laid his hand on the girl's shoulder; instantly her whole form relaxed and she drooped into her customary attitude of listless indifference.

"Anything wrong, little gal?" asked Jacob Bailey, kindly. Flora May shook her head and turned away with a pettish movement of her shoulders.

"She was wantin' me to sing for her," said Pippin. "I will, too, Mr. Bailey, sir, soon as ever you and Mis' Bailey are ready. I don't mean to brag of my singin', don't you think that, but it's what has ben give me, and about all I have to give when folks is so dandy to me as what you folks have been here. So if agreeable, sir, say the word and I'll tune up!"

CHAPTER VI
PIPPIN SINGS FOR HIS SUPPER

SO Pippin sang for his supper, a grateful Tommy Tucker; and the imbecile girl sat at his feet and listened, rocking to and fro, her lovely face so full of joy that it was almost – almost —

He sang about the Young Lady who went a-hunting with her dog and her gun, and about poor bonny sweet Bessie, the Flower of Dundee, and "Silver Threads among the Gold," which made Mrs. Bailey cry and Jacob blow his nose loudly. He was about to give them "Nancy Lee," but checked suddenly. Was he forgetting the Lord, after that elegant supper? Now wouldn't that give you a pain?

"That's right!" Pippin spoke so suddenly that everybody started. "Excuse me!" he said hastily. "I was thinkin' – leastways I wa'n't thinkin' – well, it don't signify whichever way of it, but if agreeable, I will praise the Lord a spell!"

A murmur of approval greeted him. Mrs. Bailey's kind face lighted up.

"That will surely be a treat!" she cried. "And – oh, Mr. Pippin, wait one moment! If you don't mind standing in the doorway of old Mr. Blossom's room, so he can hear you? He's real quiet now, and I'm sure 'twill do him good – "

So Pippin stood in the doorway, and threw back his head and sang with all his heart and soul:

 
"When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes."
 

This hymn is left out of many hymn books nowadays; it is old-fashioned, and some of its lines are patently absurd: but I wish the hymnologists could hear Pippin sing it. His voice goes soaring up, a golden trump of victory and triumph:

 
"There shall I bathe my weary soul
In seas of heavenly rest;
And not a wave of trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast."
 

As he finished, he swung round, his eyes blazing, every inch of him a-thrill. "Old man," he cried, and the passion in his voice made them all start. "Don't you feel it? Don't you feel somethin' crinklin' all through you, like sap in a sugar maple? That's the grace of God, Old man; let her run! Oh, Lord, let her run!"

There was a moment's silence; then Mr. Blossom snickered. It is not a pretty word, but then it was not a pretty sound.

Pippin was at his side in an instant, his eyes ablaze again, but with a very different light.

"You old skunk!" he cried, gripping the bony shoulders hunched below the leering face. "You darned old son of a broken whisky jug, you dare to snicker before the Lord? For half a quarter of a cent I'd wring your rooster's neck for you, you – "

He stopped, as if somebody had touched him. His head drooped, his arms dropped by his side, and he flushed scarlet from throat to forehead. He stood so for several minutes, no one stirring; then he turned humbly to Jacob Bailey.

"I ask your pardon, sir, and the company's. I lost holt of myself. There! I am fairly ashamed." He leaned over the poor old sinner, who was still gasping from the sudden onslaught. "Hurt you, did I, Old Man? I ask your pardon, too, I do so. Lemme h'ist you a mite!"

With anxious care he raised the shrunken figure and settled the pillows under the palsied head.

"There! That comfy, old geezer? Now you go to sleep! I was a mutt to shake you up that way. Goo' night, Old Man!"

Sitting on his neat bed an hour later, Pippin dealt with himself, as judge with criminal. His vivid fancy saw himself as two distinct beings, one arraigning, the other replying. He desired to know whether he, Pippin, thought he was all creation? Because if so, he took leave to tell him he wasn't, nor anything approachin' it. Reassured on this point, he further observed that perhaps on the whole it might be best for him to go back to Shoreham. Most likely he wasn't prepared yet to live among Christian folks; say he was to go back for another year till he'd learned to hold his tongue and keep his temper! How would he like that?

"Well, then, you behave! If you're a Christian, show up, that's what I say. What was it you promised Elder Hadley? To look for the grace of God in every one you see, wasn't it? Well, then! Did you look for it in Old Man Blossom?"

"Why, sure! Didn't I sing, and pray, and all? I couldn't find no grace, not a mite, so help me!"

Silence; the outward man sitting with bent head and knotted brows, the inner – both of him – wrestling with a problem. At last the brows cleared, the head lifted.

"Bonehead!" said Pippin. "You didn't look in the right place. Prayin' an' singin' wasn't his kind, no more than they were a dumb critter's. Didn't he want his little gal, want her real bad? Wasn't that mebbe the way grace took him? I expect the Lord has as many ways as there is folks."

Finally Pippin concluded that he would do well to say his prayers and go to bed and let the Lord run things a spell, as He was full able to do. And start off next morning, sure thing, or the Boss would think he had cut. Gee! he hated to leave this place!

"I don't see how you do it!" said Pippin. "Gorry to 'Liza, Mr. Brand, I don't see how you do it!"

Brand was making a broom; Pippin, smoking his after-breakfast and before-departure pipe in the barn doorway, watched him with growing wonder and admiration. His fingers seemed almost to twinkle, they moved so fast, knotting, laying together, binding in the fragrant strands of broom corn.

"I've made many a broom!" Pippin went on. "I was counted a crackerjack at bindin'; but you work twice as fast blind as what I would seein'; that's what gets me!"

The blind man raised his head with a smile, his hands never ceasing their swift motion.

"I sometimes think seeing folks don't have half a chance at broom-making and like that," he said. "There's so many things to take their minds off. Now, take this minute of time. There's a cloud passing over the sun, isn't there?"

"Why, yes!" Pippin looked up involuntarily, shifting his position a little to do so. "Yes, sir, there is. Now how – "

"And you had to look up to see it!" the blind man went on, calmly. "That takes time and attention. Now I feel the cloud, and that's all there is to it. There are some advantages in being blind; born blind, that is."

Pippin gave him a helpless look. His eyes wandered over the scene before him: the wide, sunny barnyard, the neat buildings, the trim garden spaces, the green, whispering trees; beyond them the white ribbon of the road, and wave upon wave of fair rolling country, sinking gradually to where the river flowed between its darkly wooded banks; overhead a sky of dazzling blue flecked with cloudlets of no less dazzling white. There was a hawk hovering over the chicken yard. Pippin picked up a stone and threw it at the bird, which vanished with a shrill scream. His eyes came back to the figure in the doorway, with bent head and flying fingers.

"Advantages?" he repeated, and his tone was as helpless as his look had been. "Well, you get me, Mr. Brand, every time. You – you was born blind, sir, do I understand?"

Brand nodded. "Sixty years ago this month. When I say advantages, I don't mean I would have chose – " he made a slight, eloquent gesture toward the clear, sightless eyes. "But since so it is, one looks at it from that end, you see, and one finds – advantages. For one thing, changes don't trouble a born-blind man as they do seeing folks. I hear talk about this person looking poorly, and that one having gone gray, and lost his teeth, and like that; that don't trouble me, you see, not a mite. Folks look to me just as they sound. Now take our folks here – Lucy – I would say Mrs. Bailey – and Jacob: well, their voices tell me what they are like, see? They called Lucy handsome when she was a girl; she's just as handsome to me as she was then."

There was a wistful note in his voice, and Pippin responded instantly.

"She's a fine-appearin' lady, now!" he said heartily. "She sure is."

"I presume likely!" said Brand. "She'd have to be, being what she is. When Lucy first grew up, I made a – a picture (so to say! I never saw a picture) of her in my mind, and I see it as clear to-day as I did then."

He was silent for a time, then went on, in an altered tone: "Then there's other things, things that seeing folks don't have. Take hearing. I hear twice what most folks do, and I hear things no seeing person can hear; undertones, our music teacher called them, and overtones, too. Now, you hear a woman's dress rustle, and that's all, isn't it?"

"Ye-yes!" Pippin replied. "That is – I can tell a silk rustle from a calico, and a woolen from either."

"Well, that is more than many men can do. Women, of course; but not many men without training." The blind man leaned forward, and felt carefully of Pippin's ear. "A good ear!" he nodded approvingly. "An excellent good ear! There's many hold that the outer ear has nothing to do with hearing, but I don't know! I don't know! The Doctor told me of a king who wanted to know everything that was said in his house – palace, like! – and he built it in the shape of an ear. Long ago, Doctor said it was, and he didn't say he believed it, but I've often wondered. But you've had training, too; you've learned how to listen, which is more than some folks learn all their lives long."

"You bet I had training!"

Not a vision this time, though a dim, brutal figure lurks in the background; not a vision, but a sound!

"Listen! listen, you cursed pup, or I'll cut your heart out. My ears are thick to-night. Is that a cop's whistle, or a pal's? If you get it wrong, I'll make you sweat blood – "

"Yes, I had training!" said Pippin.

"Then – " Brand's face was fairly glowing as he turned it on his young visitor. It was not often that he could speak of his blindness, but there was something about this boy that seemed to draw speech from him like a magnet. "Then – there's the other senses; smell – why, what wonderful pleasure I have in a delicate smell! Whether it's a flower, or my bacon when it's smoked just to the fine point, or – why, take smoke alone, all the various kinds of it! Wood smoke, and good tobacco, and leaves burning in the fall of the year, and brush fires in spring! And there's herbs, southernwood, mint, lemon balm – wonderful pleasure in odors, yes, sir! And when you come to touch, why there's where a blind man has it over a seeing, almost every time. The pleasure of touching a leaf of mullein, say, or soft hair like the little gal's – Flora May's, I would say – or a fruit, or a baby's cheek – wonderful pleasure! I wonder are your fingers as good as your ears? Let me see!" He held out his hand, and Pippin laid his own in it.

How proud you were of your hands, Pippin! How you used to boast that your fingers needed no sandpaper to sharpen their exquisite touch! Is that why you hang your head, and the blood creeps up to the roots of your hair?

"If he's let to live," a husky voice murmurs, "he'll make a – good un; but I ain't certain but I'll wring his neck yet. There's things about him ain't right!"

Perfectly consistent, Mr. Bashford, and wholly correct from your point of view!

"A fine hand!" says David Brand. "Strong and yet delicate. You can do a great deal with that hand, young man. Why, with that, and your fine ears, you – why – " he laughs his cheery laugh – "I won't go so far as say you'd ought to have been born blind, but you surely would make a first-rate blind man!"

Pippin puffed at his pipe meditatively for a few minutes, considering the serene face and the flying fingers. What a face it was! the calm, thoughtful brow, the well-cut features, the clear eyes, the patient look – well, there! If an Angel could be old – that is to say, gettin' on in years – and blind, this would sure be him! Now – come to see a face like this, you know the Lord has ben there: is there, right along, same as the devil was with Dod and Nosey and them. Do a person good, now, to hear what he has to tell, how the Lord has dealt with him, what say? He couldn't more than say no, if —

"Mr. Brand!" Pippin spoke timidly, yet eagerly. "You'll excuse me – but when I like folks, I like to know about 'em; what they've no objection to tellin' is what I would say. You must have a lot that's real interestin' – I hope no offense!" he ended lamely.

"None in the world!" Brand laughed cheerily. "Quite the other way, young man. Old folks don't always find young ones that care to hear their old stories. I should be pleased – find a seat, won't you? I haven't much to tell, but you're welcome to what there is!"

Pippin curled his long legs up on the floor, his back against the door jamb. "This is great!" he murmured. "This certainly is great. I'd ought to be gettin' on, but I don't care. Now if you're ready, Mr. Brand!"

Brand reached for a pile of straws, measured, clipped, laid them in orderly piles ready for binding in.

"I was born in Cyrus," he said; "born and raised. I was the only child, and my parents did everything they could for me. I was a happy youngster and had reason to be. Everybody was good to me; Cyrus is a good, kind neighborly place. Yes, sir, I was a happy boy. Always singing and laughing; I recollect hearing folks say, 'Poor child!' or like that when they came to see mother. I used to wonder what poor child they meant. I asked Lucy one day – Lucy Allen, that's Mrs. Bailey now; we lived next door, and played together always, her and Jacob and me. I says, 'Lucy, who are they always saying "Poor child!" about? Is it you?' And Lucy says, 'I wouldn't wonder, Dave! My front teeth has come out, and I am a sight.' Little girl seven years old: she was that thoughtful always, Lucy was. She was doing me good turns every day and all day when we was little: once, I remember, I had a chance to do her one. We was playing together in Uncle Ivory Cheeseman's candy kitchen – he give us the run of it, Lucy and Jacob and me, because he could trust us, he said; he was a kind old man, though crusty where crust was needed. Well, we was playing there, and Lucy went too near the stove and her dress caught fire. I smelled it before it begun to blaze, and caught it in my two hands and squeezed it out. 'Twas a calico skirt; another minute and 'twould have been in a blaze."

Brand paused, and Pippin looked up inquiringly.

"I've always been thankful for that!" said Brand. "There was a girl at the Institution who lost her sight by burning, just that way, her skirt catching at the stove."

"Now wouldn't that give you a pain?" murmured Pippin. "I know what burnin' feels like, just a mite of it. Not meanin' to interrupt, Mr. Brand; I'm just as interested!"

"When I was ten years old, mother died, and father sent me to the Blind Institution. I was there many years, and there I learned all I know – except what I learned before or since!" Brand added with a whimsical smile. "That puts me in mind of the first – no, the second – day I was there. I was to see the Doctor, the head of the Institution – he was away the day I came – and I was left alone in his office to wait for him. I was always keen to see what kind of place I was in, so I was moving about the room, finding out in my own way, when the door opened and two men came in. One of them was tall – what say?"

"Now! now!" cried Pippin. "How in the airthly did you know he was tall?"

"His voice was high up! That's an easy one, Pippin. Why, you would know that, with those good ears. He was speaking, and the first sound of that voice stays by me yet. A master voice! I've never forgot the words either. 'The first lesson – the hard lesson – you have first to learn is —to be blind– to live in the world without light – to look upon your life as still a blessing and a trust, and to resolve to spend it well and cheerfully, in the service of your Maker and for the happiness of those about you.'"¹

He paused. Pippin sat spellbound, gazing at the face that was indeed now as the face of an angel.

"The service of your Maker, and the happiness – " he murmured. "Say, that's great! It – it sounds like a song, don't it, Mr. Brand? Or – like Psalms, some way of it! I'd like to learn them words off by heart, sir, if no objection."

"He was a great man!" said Brand reverently. "A great and good man. As he spoke, so he lived, for his Maker and his fellow men. The man he spoke to gave a kind of groan, I remember; he had just lost his sight – a gun that wasn't loaded, the old story! Then the Doctor said a little more, comforting him like, and then he saw me. I had felt all round the room, and now I had my fingers on a raised map that hung on the wall. I had heard of such things and was pleased to death to get hold of one. I suppose it showed in my face, for the Doctor said, 'Here's a little fellow who already knows how to be blind! Come here, my son!' I went straight to him – his voice led me, you understand: I could always follow a voice, from the time I learned to walk. He laid his hand on my head and turned my face up, studying me. I knew that; I felt his eyes, is the only way I can put it. 'Born blind, weren't you, my boy?' he said. 'Twasn't often the Doctor had to be told anything about blind folks – or seeing either, for that matter. Well, sir, that was the beginning of life for me, in a way. I got my education there. 'Twas a happy place, and a happy life. I could tell about it from now till sundown, and not fairly make a beginning. The Doctor was my friend; everybody was my friend. I was quick, and I wanted to learn; and, too, there was a good deal I didn't have to learn, being born blind, you see. There's a passage in the Bible about remembering that 'he was born thus'; I used to think – "

A silence fell, while Brand counted strands, Pippin watching him eagerly. A black hen who had been watching, too, her head cocked, her bright yellow eye fixed on the blind man with the false air of intelligence affected by hens, came up with a quick, rocking step, and uttered a long, reflective "crawk!" scratching meanwhile on the barn floor.

"Hicketty Picketty wants some corn!" said Brand. "Here, Picketty!" He took a handful of corn from a bag and scattered it. The black hen pecked vigorously, trying to get every grain swallowed before any one else should come; but the motion of Brand's hand brought other hens fluttering, squawking, jostling, to get their share, and there was quite a scrimmage before he could resume his work.

"I spoil that hen!" he said apologetically. "Jacob says I oughtn't, and it's true; but she has such a way with her! There's no other hen I'm so partial to, though I love them all.

"Well! Want to hear any more, or are you tired of listening? 'Tisn't much of a story; I warned you in the beginning."

"Tired? Well, I guess nix! Why, I'm – why, it's great, Mr. Brand! I'm learnin' something 'most every word you say. Do go on, sir – if I'm not troublin' you!"

"I don't know as there is so very much more to tell, after all. A man's life goes on steady; there don't things keep happening right along, as they do in stories. I've had a quiet life, but a real pleasant one. I stayed on at the Institution quite a spell after I grew up, teaching in the shop. Basketry is what I taught; I liked it best, and was good at it. Then, along when I was thirty years old, father needed me, and I came home. He was getting on in years, and he needed some one, and I was the one. His housekeeper got married, and I was handy about the house. Yes, we made out to do well, father and I, as long as he lived. Spare time and evenings, I'd make brooms and baskets, and the neighbors took all I could make. Sometimes I'd make a trip round other places, same as you do with your wheel, Pippin. I liked that real well. Lucy and Jacob had married by that time – I always knew they would! I – yes, I always knew they would, and right and fitting it was. Jacob's folks had passed on, and he and Lucy lived there next door to us, and was like brother and sister to me, as they always had been. Cyrus is a pleasant place; yes, sir, we've all been happy, only when Lucy lost her little David – named for me, yes, and like my own to me. That was a grief, but grief is part of our lot. Lucy mourned so, Jacob was desirous of making a change for her, and about that time they was changing here, too, and the selectmen beseeched Jacob and Lucy to take the place, and they did. They wanted me to come with them then, but I wouldn't leave father. Bimeby, though, father passed on, and then – I didn't make up my mind right away to the change. I didn't want to be a care to Lucy, and I thought I could get on by myself, and I could; but – well – no need to go into that. Along about ten years back I come to make my home here with my good friends, and I've never regretted, nor I hope they haven't."

"No need to go into that!" Quite right, Brand. Impossible for you, being what you are, to tell of the various persons, male and female, who saw your comfortable cottage and few but fertile acres, and "felt a call to do for you." Lucy Bailey sometimes spoke of it to her husband with amused indignation. "Fairly driven out of his home, David was! The idea! Lucky we had one to offer him, or he'd have been saddled with the whole passel of them, like Cap'n Parks was a while back, and no Mercy Lovely to trim 'em out for him."

A doleful squeak was heard, and a wheelbarrow trundled slowly by with Mr. Wisk as the motive power. "You'd think 'twould go faster by itself!" Pippin thought; then reproached himself, the man being afflicted. Brand's fine brows contracted as he listened to the squeak.

"Wisk has been promising to oil that exe for a month!" he said. "It gives me the toothache to hear it."

"Moves kinder moderate, don't he?" said Pippin. "I s'pose his leg henders him."

Brand laughed. "I don't – know! Aunt Mandy Whetstone says the lame leg makes the better time of the two. She's small and spry, you know, and Wisk gets in her way sometimes. He means all right, but he never feels any call to hurry, that I know of."

Here Mr. Wisk, having given up the wheelbarrow as a bad job, came hobbling up, and with a wheeze by way of greeting, planted his shoulders against the door-jamb. "Nice mornin'!" he said.

"Great!" replied Pippin. "It surely is great! I'd oughter ben on the road an hour ago, but Mr. Brand makes it hard to get away, now I tell ye. I must go in and say good-by to the folks, and then I'm off. Mr. Brand, I thank you a thousand times for all you've told me, and you may be sure I shan't forget it, no, sir! You'll see me again pretty soon. I shan't be able to keep away from this place more'n just about so long, I see that plain. Good-by, sir!"

They shook hands warmly, the blind man urging him to come sooner and stay longer every time he could.

"Good-by to you, too, Mister." Pippin turned to the lame man.

"I'm goin' into the house!" said the latter. "I'll step along with you. I want a drink o' water!"

He stumped along beside Pippin. Out of earshot of the barn, he looked back over his shoulder. "Or a drink of something!" he added. "Got a drop about you, young feller?"

"No, I ain't!" said Pippin shortly. He was not drawn toward Mr. Wisk.

"I thought you might have. I'm orful dry, and the water here don't agree with me. Say! Brand ain't the only one is afflicted, young man. I want you should understand that. My limb pains me something fierce; very close veins is what I have. You wouldn't find me in no such place as this if I didn't. Brand's a stand-offish kind of cuss, but he don't measure up so much higher than other folks as what he thinks, mebbe. They make of him because he's blind, but I'll bet a dollar he don't suffer nights the way I do. Got a mite of tobacker to spare? Ain't? When I was in trade – I was a tin-knocker while I had my health – I allers made out to have a drop and a chew for a gen'leman when he asked for it; it helped trade. I was allers called a good feller. Well, so long! Call again!"