Pippin; A Wandering Flame Part 21

CHAPTER XIV

PIPPIN LOOKS FOR OLD MAN BLOSSOM'S LITTLE GAL

Back to the city, Pippin! Leafy suburbs, irradiated by clothes-hanging G.o.ddesses, are all very well, but they are not your affair; or if they are, you do not know it. All you know is that you have to find a girl, a girl whose rightful name is May Blossom, but likely changed o' purpose to keep the old man from finding the kid, and small blame to her Ma for that.

Pippin goes over in his mind such scant information as he possesses. May Blossom was put in some kind of a Home joint, being then, the Old Man would judge, six year old, or a year off or on it. Pretty little gal--pretty little gal--Pippin's mind comes to a dead stop.

He brushes his hand across his eyes. The vision is upon him, but only to confuse and bewilder. An alley, or narrow court, where clothes are drying. A mite of a girl trying to take the clothes down. She cannot reach them, stamps her feet, cries; a boy comes and takes them down for her.

"Thank you, boy!" she says.

"Say 'Pippin!'"

"Pip-_pin_!"

"Green gra.s.s!" Pippin murmurs. "Now--now--could that have been her? He always said he'd knowed me from a baby; said he lived neighbor to Granny Faa--I never believed him special; but he sure was a pal of Bashford's.

Now wouldn't it give you a pain if that little gal was his little gal; wouldn't it?"

What he had to do now was find what Homes there was, and ask what become of a little gal name of May Blossom--or anyways looking thus and so.

Pippin smote his thigh, and threw back his head.

"One thing at a time, You'll earn a dime: Six things in a pickle You'll lose a nickel!

like Mr. Baxter says. Now watch me find that joint!"

We cannot watch Pippin through this search, which took several days.

True, there were only two Children's Homes in the city; but the approaches to them were devious, and Pippin's methods were his own.

First he must find a bakery in the neighborhood of the Home, the one most nearly approaching the perfection of Baxter's. Here he must linger for an hour or more, talking bakery gossip, discussing yeast, milk powder, rotary ovens, and dough dividers; sharpening the knives, too, mostly for brotherly love, for was not he a (temp'ry) baker as well as knife-grinder? Here he would ask casually about the joint whose red brick or gray stone walls towered near by. Home for kids, was it? Well, that was a dandy _i_dea, sure! Did the baker supply--did? Had their own baker, but took his buns and coffee-cake reg'lar? He wanted to know!

Well, talkin' of coffee-cake--here yarns might be swapped for a matter of half an hour. Then the baker would be asked what kind of a man the boss was? Or was she a woman? Was? Well--well, even if so! Thursday was visitors' day, was it? Well, he wouldn't wonder a mite but what he'd look in there some Thursday. Pretty to see a lot of kids together, what?

His first visit to the stone Home with the mullioned windows was a short one. The black-robed superintendent was courteous, but cool; she was not interested in either grinding or bakeries. There had been several red-haired girls at the Home in her time, but none named Mary Blossom, none corresponding with Pippin's description. Was he a relative? No? She was much occupied--"Good morning!"

"She don't want no boes in hers!" said Pippin thoughtfully, as he bore Nipper out of the paved courtyard. "I don't blame her, not a mite!"

At the red-brick Home with the green fanlight over the door his reception was more cordial. The kindly, rosy face of the Matron beamed responsive to his smile. The morning was bright, and she had just heard of a thousand-dollar legacy coming to the Home, so her own particular shears needed sharpening, and she superintended the process (she had a gra.s.s plot to stand on, too, instead of a pavement) and they had a good dish of talk, as she told the a.s.sistant later.

Hearing Pippin's brief account of his quest, she meditated, her mind running swiftly back over the years of her superintendence.

"A child of six or eight!" she repeated thoughtfully. "With hair like a yearling heifer's! Why, we have had many children with red hair; the sandy kind, and the bricky, and the carrotty--_and_ the auburn; but none of them sound just like the child you describe. Then, the parents! You never saw the mother, you say? What was the father like?"

"Like a crook!" said Pippin promptly.

"Dear me! That is a pity. Can you describe him? Not that I ever saw him, but the child might have resembled him--"

"Not her!" Pippin averred confidently. "The old man never looked like anything but--well, call it mud and plaster, and you won't be far off.

Now the little gal was a pictur. Hair like I said, and eyes--well, first they'd be blue and then they'd be brown, like in runnin' water; know what I mean? And the prettiest way of speakin' you ever--"

"_Why, you've seen her!_ You didn't say you had seen her."

Pippin looked helplessly into the clear gray eyes that had suddenly grown sharp and piercing. "I--don't--know!" he said.

"Don't know what?"

"Whether I see her, or whether I just--" He stopped to sigh and run his fingers through his hair, almost knocking his file out. "I expect I'll have to explain!" he said.

"I think you will!" The tone was not harsh, but it was firm and decided.

The Matron had seen many people, and was not to be beguiled by the brightest eyes or the most winning smile. Moreover, the "pictur" Pippin had conjured up had brought a corresponding image on her mental kinetoscope; she, too, saw the child with eyes like running water and the prettiest way of speaking; saw and recognized.

Pippin sighed again.

"When I say I don't know," he said slowly, "it's because I don't! Just plain that! When I said the way that gal looked, it--well, it's like it wasn't me that said it, but somebody else inside me. Why, I spoke it right off like it was a piece: 'twas as if _somebody_ knew all along what that little gal looked like. Now--"

The Matron took him up sharply. "As if somebody knew? What do you mean by 'somebody'?"

Light came to Pippin. Why, of course!

"I expect it's a boy!" he said.

"What boy?"

"I expect it's the boy I used to be. I forget him most of the time, but nows and thens he speaks up and gives me to understand he's there all right. You see, lady, when I was a boy, there was a little gal--somewheres near where I lived, I expect; and she had--yes, she sure had hair that color, and eyes that same kind. And when you spoke just now, it all come back, and seemed like 'twas the boy tellin', not me in a present way of speakin'. I don't know as you see what I'm drivin' at, but I don't know as I can put it any plainer."

"What kind of boy were you?"

"Guttersnipe!"

"Where did you live?"

Pippin described the cellar as well as he could. It was no longer in existence, he had ascertained that. Where it had yawned and stunk, a model tenement now stood prim and cheerful.

The Matron looked grave. Her clear gaze pierced through and through the man, as if--his own homely simile--she would count the b.u.t.tons on the back of his s.h.i.+rt.

"What references have you?" she asked presently.

"References?" Pippin looked vague.

"Yes! I don't know anything about you--except that you are certainly a good scissor-grinder!" she smiled, half relenting. "You want to know about one of our girls--about some one who might have been one of our girls--" she corrected herself hastily--"and you say you were a guttersnipe and her father was a crook. Young man, our girls have nothing to do with crooks or guttersnipes, you must understand that.

Unless you can refer me to some one--" her pause was eloquent.

"I wish't Elder Hadley was here!" said Pippin. "He'd speak for me, lady!"

"Elder Hadley? Where does he live?"

Pippin sighed, fingered his file, sighed again. Easy to tell his story to Jacob Bailey and Calvin Parks, the good plain men who had known good and evil and chosen good all their lives long; less easy, but still not too hard, to tell it to the kind Baxters who knew and loved him: but here, in the city, to a woman who knew crooks and guttersnipes and probably feared or despised them--not easy! Still--

"You see, lady," said Pippin, "'tis this way."