Pippin; A Wandering Flame Part 6

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 gra.s.s! 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 embarra.s.sed--"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 G.o.dly 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 gla.s.s 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 m.u.f.fins. 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 s.h.i.+ning. "You see, sir, I was raised a crook!"

"Hus.h.!.+" 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 G.o.d 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 'G.o.d d.a.m.n' 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 d.a.m.nin' 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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n, 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.h.i.+ning gla.s.s. "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 mola.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+ngle, 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 subst.i.tute '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!"