Pippin; A Wandering Flame. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe
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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?