PIPPIN GOES TO CYRUS
Pippin always looked back on the weeks he spent in Kingdom as one of his
good times. Folks were so everlastingly good to him; they couldn't
hardly have been better, he thought, not unless they had been your own.
Mrs. Baxter, the baker's wife, was like--well, call it an aunt. Yes, she
sure was like a good aunt, and equally so was her uncle; as for Buster,
the boy--well, that was Pippin's moral of a boy. Buster would grow up a
fine man, you see if he didn't. He'd _better_! As to looking for the
grace of God like he promised Elder Hadley, why, he didn't have to. It
stuck right out of 'em, like--like electric lights!
Pippin lodged with the Baxters and paid his board in work, lighting the
fires in the morning, heating the ovens, sweeping out the shop, and
doing a "hand's turn" in many directions. Mrs. Baxter declared
Providence sent him just at that time, when Father had caught his hand
in the oven door and lamed him so; she did not know what upon earth they
would have done without Pippin. Indeed he showed himself so handy that
after the first week Mr. Baxter offered him a permanent job, declared he
would make him the smartest baker in the county. Pippin promised to
think it over. He loved the smell of new bread; he loved to handle the
dough, and rake out the glowing coals; yes, it was a pleasant trade, it
sure was; but yet--but yet--
Other offers came to him. Among the crowd who had gathered to hear him
sing that first day were Father O'Brien of St. Bridget's and Elder
Stebbins, the Methodist Minister. Both were music-lovers. Both made it
in their way to drop in at the bakery in the course of the next few
days, and invite the young scissor-grinder to sing in their choir while
he sojourned in their midst. Was he a Catholic? Father O'Brien asked.
No? More was the pity, but let him come and sing in the church, and
'twould be good for him and the rest besides. Pippin assented joyfully.
He would be real pleased to come, and sing the best he knew how. Then
came Elder Stebbins, ostensibly to buy a coffee cake for supper. Was his
young friend a Christian? "You bet!" replied Pippin, wrapping up the
cake with deft fingers. "I'd have to be, wouldn't I? Unless that the
Lord had seen fit to have me a Chinee, or like that, and I'm just as
glad He didn't!"
Mr. Stebbins hoped his young friend was also a Methodist; but Pippin
shook his head; he guessed not. They were all good, he guessed; he
presumed he belonged to every church there was, in a general way, you
know. Mr. Stebbins looked grave, and said that was not a very safe
doctrine. He hoped his young friend would join their service of song on
Sunday evening; it might be helpful to him, and would assuredly minister
to the enjoyment of others. Pippin assented joyfully, after ascertaining
that service would be over in time for him to set his sponge to rise.
So on Sunday, and other happy Sundays, he went to St. Bridget's in the
morning, and sang stately old Latin hymns and chants; inhaled incense
(which he thought real tasty, but yet nothing to what the Lord could do
with a field of white clover), kneeled reverently with the rest,
listened respectfully to Father O'Brien's excellent little sermon, and
liked it all. And the evening found him behind the green moreen
half-curtains in the Methodist meetinghouse, pouring out his soul in
gospel hymns and assuring his hearers that they would meet beside the
river, the beautiful, the beautiful river, in such tones and with such
feeling that every woman in meeting wept, and there was a mighty blowing
up of nasal trumpets among the men. Elder Stebbins' discourse was rather
long-winded and rambling, but when Pippin lost the thread, he would take
refuge in a psalm, or recall one of Elder Hadley's brief, pistol-shot
addresses, or think how the buttercups shone in the field that day he
found the Lord. And here, too, he loved it all, every bit, and came home
in a glow of happiness and fervor that was enough to make the dough rise
at the sight of him.
The baker was puzzled at first by his new assistant; as the good man
himself expressed it, he didn't get on to Pippin's curves. There were
things that jarred--for a time--on his sensibilities; as thus. They were
together in the shop one evening, and a customer came in for his evening
loaf; the shoemaker it was, Jere Cargo, a man of dry, critical humor. He
commented on the loaf; it was a shade deeper brown than usual.
"One minute more, young man, and that loaf would have been burnt, that's
what!"
Pippin scanned the loaf carefully. "Is that so?" he said. "Now! Why, I
was pleased with this batch, I thought the Lord give me an elegant bake
on it: that's what I _thought_! But if folks likes 'em pale, why, pale
it is!"
The shoemaker stared; Mr. Baxter coughed apologetically as he
accompanied him to the door, and--on a summoning jerk of the
head--followed him outside.
"What have you got there?" asked the shoemaker. "A preacher? Where'd you
get him?"
"No, he isn't a preacher, though I dare say he might have been, if he'd
had education. He's just pious, that's all. It's his way of talking."
His tone was conciliatory, but the shoemaker sniffed.
"'Just pious!'" he repeated. "Look out for 'em, I say, when they're just
pious. They'll bear watching. Where'd you say he come from?"
"He's traveling!" Mr. Baxter knew his customer, and had no idea of
telling him whence Pippin came. "He's a scissor-grinder by trade, and a
master hand at it. I hurt my hand last week, and he come along just in
the nick of time and has been helping me since. Real good help he is,
too."
"Humph!" said Jere Cargo, shrugging his dry shoulders. "You look out for
him, that's all I say. Sharp-looking chap, I call that; he'll bear
watching."
Returning to the shop, Mr. Baxter coughed again, this time with his eye
on Pippin, who was arranging a tray of creamcakes with a lover's ardor.
"Ain't them handsome?" he cried. "I ask you, Boss, ain't them handsome?
And dandy to eat--green grass! Mis' Baxter give me one. _They_ drop
fatness all right, no two ways about that!"
Here Pippin broke into song, proclaiming joyously that he was a pilgrim,
he was a stranger, he could tarry, he could tarry but a night.
"Do not detain me,
For I am going--"
"Ahem!" said Mr. Baxter, "I was thinking, Pippin--"
Pippin came to attention instantly. "Yes, sir! You was thinkin'--"
"I was wondering--" the baker spoke slowly, in a tone half admonitory,
half conciliatory, and wholly embarrassed--"whether maybe you--just in a
manner, you understand, just in a manner--was in the habit of making a
mite too free with--with your Maker, so to speak."
Pippin's eye grew very round. "Meanin'--with the Lord?" he said.
"Yes! with--with--as you say, with the Lord!" Mr. Baxter was a godly
man, but his Deity lived in the meetinghouse and was rarely to be
mentioned except within its four walls. "For example," he went on, "I
was wondering whether it was exactly a good plan to bring the--the
Almighty--into the bakeshop."
"Gorry!" said Pippin. "I'd hate to leave Him out of it!" His eyes, still
round and astonished, traveled slowly about the pleasant place. Three
sides of it were filled with glass counters displaying a wealth of pies,
pumpkin, apple, mince and custard, with cakes of every variety, from the
wedding cake which was Mr. Baxter's special pride, to his wife's
creamcakes, eagerly sought by the neighborhood for ten miles round.
Behind the counter, on neat shelves, were stacked the loaves of bread,
white and brown, the crisp rolls and melting muffins. The shop looked as
good as it smelled; "ther nys namoore to seye!"
"I'd hate to leave Him out of it!" repeated Pippin. "Dandy place like
this! Don't know as I get you this time, Boss!" He turned bewildered
brown eyes on Mr. Baxter, who coughed again and reddened slightly.
"What I meant--" the baker ran his eye along a pile of loaves, and
straightened one that had slipped out of place--"isn't it making rather
free with--ahem! what say?"
"Oh!" Pippin's face lightened. "I get you! Now I get you, sir! Lemme
tell you! Lemme tell you just the way it is." Fairly stammering in his
eagerness, Pippin leaned across the counter, his eyes shining. "You see,
sir, I was raised a crook!"
"Hush!" Mr. Baxter looked over his shoulder. "No need to speak out loud,
Pippin. Just as well to keep that between ourselves, you know."
"I was raised," Pippin repeated in a lower tone, "a crook, and I
heard--and used--crooks' language. Nor it isn't only crooks!" he cried,
smiting the counter. "Where I was raised, 'most everybody had the name
of God on their tongues every hour in the day, but not in the way of
praisin' Him; no, sir! There's plenty folks--good folks, too--they can't
name hardly anything, whatever be it, without 'God damn' before it. You
know that, Mr. Baxter. You know what street talk is, sir." The baker
nodded gravely. "Well, then! That's what I was raised to, and it run off
my tongue like water, till--till I come to know Elder Hadley. I'm
tol'able noticin', sir; I expect crooks is, when they're all there; you
have to be, to get on. I noticed right off the way he spoke, clean and
short and pleasant, no damnin' nor cussin'; and I liked it, same as I
liked clean folks and despised dirty ones. That was all there was to it
at first. But yet I couldn't stop all of a sudden; it took time, same as
anything does, to learn it. Then--come to find the Lord, like I told
you, sir, why--I dunno how to put it. I'd ben askin' Him all my life to
damn everything, this, that, and the other, folks, and--everything, I
say; I didn't mean it, 'twas just a fool way of speakin', but what I
thought was, supposin' I was to ask Him to help right along, 'stead of
damn, and _make_ it mean something! What say? You get my idea, Mr.
Baxter, sir?"
Mr. Baxter nodded again. "I get it, Pippin. I won't say anything more."
"But yet--but yet--" Pippin was stammering again, and halfway across the
counter in his passion of eagerness. "I get you, too, Boss! I do, sure
thing. You mean it brings some folks up short, like that gen'leman that
stepped in just now? He's no use for me, I see that right off; I
wondered why, and now 'tis clear as print. I'd oughter sized him up
better. Take that kind of man, and he may be good as they make 'em,
prob'ly is; but yet--well--you say the Lord's name _excep'_ in the way
of cussin'--I don't mean that he's that kind himself--but--_it's like he
stubbed his toe on the Lord's ladder, see?_"
"You've got it! you've got it!" the baker was nodding eagerly in his
turn. He laughed and rubbed his hands. "Stubbed his toe on--on the
Lord's ladder! I--I expect I stub mine a mite, too, Pippin, but I won't
say another word."
"'Cause we're awful glad the ladder's there, ain't we, sir?" Pippin's
voice was wistful enough now.
"Ahem! Yes! yes!" The baker took out a clean red handkerchief and rubbed
an imaginary spot on the shining glass. "That's all right, Pippin. Do
what comes natural to you; only--what _are_ you doing now?"
There was a little stove in the shop, behind the middle counter, used
for "hotting up" coffee or the like when people were in a hurry. Pippin,
after a glance at the clock, had taken some pennies out of the till, and
was laying them carefully on the top of the stove, which glowed red
hot.
"What are you doing?" repeated the baker. Pippin grinned.
"Tryin' an experiment!" he said. "There was a quarter missin' yesterday,
Boss, you rec'lect, and ten cents the day before, and so along back."
"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."