CHAPTER XIV

PIPPIN LOOKS FOR OLD MAN BLOSSOM'S LITTLE GAL

Back to the city, Pippin! Leafy suburbs, irradiated by clothes-hanging goddesses, 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 grass!" 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 grass plot to stand on, too, instead of a pavement) and they had a good dish of talk, as she told the Assistant 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 buttons on the back of his shirt.

"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."

* * * * *

The Matron heard his story, listening attentively, now and then putting a shrewd question. When it was over, she excused herself, not unkindly but with a grave formality unlike her first cheerful aspect. She must attend to something in the house. If he could wait ten or fifteen minutes--

"Sure!" said Pippin. "And I might be sharpening the meat knife or like that? I'll throw it in for luck."

While he was sharpening the meat knife (which, he said to himself, had been used something awful; you'd think they'd gone over it with a crosscut saw!), he heard a cheerful hubbub in the street outside; distant at first, then louder, as turning a corner; louder still, as close at hand; till with a deafening outburst of treble and alto the gate of the courtyard was flung open, and--

"Green grass!" cried Pippin. "Here's the kids!"

Here they were indeed, just out of school, rosy, tousled, jubilant: boys and girls, the former small, the latter all sizes from kindergarten toddlers to the big sixteen-year-old maiden to whose skirts they clung. At sight of a strange man they checked, and the hubbub fell into sudden silence; only for a moment, though, for Pippin smiled, and in another minute they were all around him, hustling and elbowing to get the closest sight of the wheel.

"Easy!" said Pippin. "Easy does it! Don't come too nigh her; she bites!" There was an instant recoil, with symptoms of possible flight. "What I would say," he went on, "she'll bite if you touch her; no other ways. Look with your eyes and not your hands! _And not your hands!_"

A swift shove of his elbow saved the fingers of a small boy who thought he knew better, and sent him back upon his more prudent neighbors. Shouts resounded.

"Jimmy got his!"

"Yeh! Jim-_may_! You got yours!"

The culprit faced round with crimson cheeks and doubled fists. He had only been at the Home a few weeks, and fighting was still his one form of argument; a snub-nosed, freckled bull pup of a boy. Pippin observed him, and liked his looks.

"Say!" said Pippin. "Look at here! Want to hear her sing?"

"Hear who sing, Mister?"

"The wheel! Stow your noise a sec., while I ask her." He bent over the wheel and seemed to speak and listen. The children waited open-mouthed, goggle-eyed. "Says she's got a cold," he announced cheerfully, "and feels bashful beside! Say, I'll have to sing for her. What say?"

"Yep, Mister! Do, Mister! Sing, Mister!" came in chorus.

"O.K. You'll have to keep still, though. I'm bashful myself, you see. Now then--Where's the smallest kid? Here, kiddy! Come to Pippin! Don't be skeered, he won't bite nuther. Gimme your hands--that's a daisy! Now then--

"There was an old man, And he was mad--"

When the Matron appeared again, accompanied by an older woman of severe aspect, Pippin was sitting on the cellar door, half-buried in children. One little imp was sitting astride his neck, hammering time on his chest with sturdy heels; a six-year-old girl clung to either shoulder, two or three more were on his knees, the rest sat or knelt or squatted as close as they could get; and Pippin, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the maple leaves overhead, was shouting at the top of his lungs:

"Darling, I am growing o-hold! Silver threads among the gold Shine upon my brow to-day-hay, Life is fading fast away!"

As the song ended, before the Matron could make her presence known, the bull pup known as Jimmy fell silently upon his nearest neighbor, a boy somewhat bigger than himself, and pommeled him ferociously. The victim shrieking aloud, Pippin seized the pup by the scruff of his neck, dragged him off, and held him at arm's length, wriggling and clawing the air, his eyes darting fire.

"What ails you?" demanded Pippin. "What d'he do?"

"Didn't do nothin'!" wailed the bigger boy.

"He picked on me!" raged the smaller.

"Didn't neither!"

"Did teither! And pinched m' leg beside! Lemme go!"

"Yeth, Mithter!" piped a five-year-old. "He did pinch him! I thee him do it!"

"Hold still, pup! hold still! I'm bigger'n you be. Now then, you, leave him be, you hear me? I expect you did pinch him all right, all right; you look like a pincher. Now look at here! Can you wrestle, you two?"

"Betcher life!" "Nope!" came in a fiery yap and anguished yelp from the two.

"Green grass! What are you made of? Putty, or dough-scrapin's?" This to the yelper, while still holding the yapper well in hand. "Now if we could make a ring, and leave you fight it out sensible, and--"

The Matron stepped quickly forward. Pippin, aware of her, scrambled to his feet, shaking off (very gently, be sure) all but the urchin on his neck, who only clung the tighter; and still holding the bull pup--by the collar now--he beamed on the Matron.

"I was sayin', lady," he said, "that if you'd leave me make a ring, and these two pups fight it out, we'd see which would lick, and they'd be friends from now on. What say?"

The Matron said, "No!" decidedly, and at a word from her the children scuttled into the house by their side door, albeit with many a backward glance.

Pippin looked longingly after the freckled pup. "There's a kid I like!" he said. "I could do something with that kid if I had him. 'Tother one's a low-down skeezicks by the look of him. Here's the knife, lady; I hope it's satisfactory."

It was; but the two ladies desired a word with Pippin indoors, if he could leave his wheel. Pippin expected he could; he'd never knowed the Nipper to bolt, nor even shy. "After you, ladies!" Now who taught Pippin to hold the door open and bow with the grace of a young birch in the wind?

The Matron wondered, but said nothing. The three passed into a cool inexpressive parlor which had no opinion about anything, and sat down on three Mission chairs to match.

"This is Mrs. Faulkner," said the Matron; "the Assistant Matron. I am Mrs. Appleby. Your name is--?"

"Pippin, ma'am!"

"Pippin--what?"

"Pippin Nix--what I would say, it's all the name I've got. Not bein' acquainted with my parents--you see--"

"I see! It seems a curious name--The point is this. Mrs. Faulkner and I think we know--"

"Think we may possibly know!" struck in Mrs. Faulkner, speaking for the first time, and then shutting her mouth with a snap as if she feared a word too much might escape.

"--May possibly know," Mrs. Appleby corrected herself, "the girl you are looking for."

"_Green grass!_ Is that so?" Pippin smote his thigh, was confounded, and asked pardon, all in a breath.

Mrs. Faulkner bent severe brows on him, and Pippin reflected what a blessing it was Mrs. Baxter didn't ever look like that.

"We keep in touch with our girls," Mrs. Appleby continued, "till they marry or reach the age of twenty-five. The young woman we have now in mind is eighteen years old, and a very fine girl."

"Gee! Ain't that great? Where'll I find her, lady?"

"Remain seated, if you please! We will come to that presently. We know her under a name slightly different from the one you have heard. Mrs. Faulkner remembers that her mother told her she had altered the name in order that the father should not trace the child."

"Now wouldn't that--" murmured Pippin. "Say, she was a daisy, wasn't she?"

"She was perfectly right!" Mrs. Faulkner's aspect was rigid to the point of awfulness. "She was a decent woman, and wished her child decently brought up. Her husband was a reprobate!"

"Meanin' long for 'rip'?" Pippin leaned forward eagerly, with pleading eyes and voice. "He sure was, lady! Yep, Old Man Blossom was a rip from Riptown, and so remains; but yet there never was any _harm_ in him. What I would say--he's a crook, and a bo, and not the guy for family life anyways you look at it; but he never was a _mean_ guy. He never hit from behind; there was no sandbaggin' in his; just he'd give you one on the jaw if he couldn't cop the swag without, you see. Now that's square, you see, _for_ a crook! But--" Mrs. Faulkner's eyes glared wholly unresponsive. He glanced at Mrs. Appleby, and seeing, or thinking he saw, a faint glimmer that might mean an inward twinkle, addressed himself to her.

"You see how 'tis, lady! And now he's on the blink--that is, near his end, you see, and he wants his little gal; wants her bad. And--bein' a bo myself, it ain't for me to p'int out things to ladies like youse, but if she's the kind of gal like you say, mightn't she think, say, 'Well, after all, he's my dad, and I'm his kid, and 'twon't do me a mite of harm to give him a look in.' What say?"

"You say he is dying?" said the elder woman. "Has he suffered any change of heart? Does he repent of his evil ways?"

"Not yet he ain't!" Pippin flushed and his hands clenched; he seemed to hear the snicker once more. "But the way I look at it is this, lady!" He bent forward again, all shyness gone now, his brown face aglow. "'Look out for the grace of God!' says Elder Hadley to me. 'Wherever you look for it, you'll find it!' he says. 'If you don't,' he says, 'it's your own fault, for it's sure there somewhere!' he says. Well, I tried, honest I did, to find grace in Old Man Blossom, and all I could find was he wanted his little gal. So--well! What I would say, God moves in a myster'ous way, His wonders to _per_form; (sung to 'Albayno,' common metre, fine hymn, though a mite sober!) and how do I know but wantin' his little gal was the way was took by--by Them as has the handlin' of things--" a reverent jerk of the head toward the sky--"and--well--that's the way it struck me!" Pippin concluded lamely.

The tears stood in Mrs. Appleby's kind eyes, and even Mrs. Faulkner's severity was perceptibly abated.

"We only want to be sure--" faltered the former.

"We _must_ be sure!" said the latter.

"Yes--of course we must. Pippin, I believe all you say--" she glanced a trifle defiantly at her assistant--"because I cannot help it. I am sure you have told us the truth; but we cannot take action--we cannot tell you where Mary Fl--where the young woman is, until we have _proof_ of your respectability and the steadiness of your purpose. You will understand that, I am sure. Well--now! Bring us a note from Mr. Hadley, and we will tell you where she is, and will recommend her employ--that is, the people with whom she is staying--to allow her to visit her father. This is all we can do!"

She rose as she spoke, and held out her hand; Pippin grasped it heartily.

"You're a perfect lady, ma'am!" he said. "I see that the minute I laid eyes on you. I'll get that note if it takes a leg! 'Twon't take above a week to get to Shoreham--say a day there, and another week back--walkin', you understand--say two weeks, and I'll be back if I'm alive. I'm a thousand times obliged to you, lady--and you too, ma'am!" His smile loosened the strictures about Mrs. Faulkner's heart--a good heart, but over-institutionalized by years of routine--and sent a warm glow through her.

"I'll wish you good day--say!" he stopped suddenly. "About that pup--I would say kid: him with the freckles and the bull-dog grip. I like that kid. He's got sand, a whole bag of it. If you was lookin' for a home for him when he leaves this joint--but I guess we better leave that till I bring that note, what say? Good day, ladies! Come up, Nipper!" And with a comprehensive wave and smile that took in every eager face glued to the playroom window, Pippin went his way.