Part 9 (2/2)

”Mr. or Mrs. Bailey!” he called quietly. ”Mr. Blossom is having a fit!”

Mrs. Bailey, hastening in, surveyed the situation with practised eyes; lifted the patient, thumped his back gently, administered remedies, enjoined silence.

”You've ben talkin' too much, Mr. Blossom; it always brings on a spasm, and you hadn't ought to. Now lay down and take a nap, that's a good soul.”

Obeying a glance of her kind gray eyes, Pippin slipped out, leaving the old man still gasping and gurgling. Many more of them kind, Pippin reflected, would carry the old geezer off, sure thing. He was on the blink, no two ways to that. ”Loony too! Hear him laffin' fit to bust when I told him Nipper was dead! Now what do you know about that? That's loony, you see, that is! Behooves me find that little gal pooty quick if I'm goin' to find her. And how--in--Moses' meal-chist--am I goin' to find her?”

Pondering deeply, he went back into the kitchen. The table had been cleared and covered with its decent between-meals cloth of red and white check; beside it, facing the door, sat Miss Amanda Whetstone and Miss Lucilla Pudgkins, diligently mending stockings. These ladies, as has been seen, were paying boarders, and ”demeaned themselves accordin',” as they would have said. They helped Mrs. Bailey in housework, mending, etc., but always with a touch of condescension and the understanding that it was ”to accommodate.” In person they were well contrasted. Miss Whetstone was a thin active little woman, with eyes like black gla.s.s and thin lips puckered in a sub-acid smile. She was always neat as wax, in dresses of black and white striped print, the lines so near together that they seemed to waver constantly. (”Throw her away!” Flora May often besought her ”Uncle Bailey.” ”Please throw her away! She dazzles!”) But every one knew Aunt Mandy had a black silk in her trunk, and a tatting collar that the minister's wife might have been glad to possess.

Miss Lucilla Pudgkins was billowy in figure and was addicted to purple print, with a string tied round the middle to show that she knew where the waist line ought to be. Her face might have been made by a clever boy out of a large red apple; and if Aunt Mandy's eyes were like gla.s.s, Miss Lucilla's were like china, two blue china b.u.t.tons plumped into the red, on either side of the queerest b.u.t.ton of a nose that ever was seen, Pippin thought. She wore a rather pathetic ”front,” which was seldom quite straight; in fact, she was a pathetic figure altogether, poor Miss Lucilla, but she did not know it, so all was well. She never forgot that at sixteen she had been Queen of the May at a Sunday school festival, and her trunk still held, under the scanty stock of petticoats and ap.r.o.ns, the white muslin frock of her great day. Miss Lucilla was a little greedy, and somewhat foolish, though not so foolish as Aunt Mandy thought her; the att.i.tude of the two towards each other was usually an armed truce, except on occasions of general conflict, when they never failed to combine against the common enemy--usually Mr. Wisk, the fat man, who was greedy too.

The two ladies looked up eagerly as Pippin entered. How was Mr. Blossom?

Miss Whetstone asked. He sounded something awful. Was it the death spasm, did Mr. Pippin think? They had been expecting it any day, and wis.h.i.+ng his folks would come. Wasn't it awful?

”He's all right!” Pippin rea.s.sured her. ”Choked up a bit, but Mis'

Bailey knows how to handle him. He'll rest easy now, poor old skeezicks.

How long has he ben this way, ladies?”

”Sit down, do, Mr. Pippin!” Miss Whetstone hastened to make room for him beside her. ”That cheer is comfortable; set right down, now do so! He has been having those spasms ever since he come, a month and more ago, but none so bad as this. Be you kin to him?”

”Me? Not much!” Pippin shook his head vigorously.

”I only asked because one likes to know, you know, about the folks one has to a.s.sociate with. Of course you can keep yourself to yourself, and oftentimes so do, but any one ought to be sociable when they can, I claim.”

”Sure thing!” murmured Pippin absently, his eyes glancing over the speaker's head to where Flora May sat rocking in her corner, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on him with a curious intentness. She seemed to be calling him, he thought, though she made no sound. He nodded, with a friendly glance which said ”Presently!” Impossible to go at this moment, for Miss Whetstone evidently had more to say. She was bridling, and making little clucking noises in her throat, expressive (to herself, at least), of delicacy of feeling. Now speech came, preluded by a genteel t.i.tter, and accompanied by a glance round the room, which took in the blind man quietly whittling splints in his own special corner, and Flora May, rocking by the window, the latter with a compa.s.sionate depreciatory shrug of Miss Whetstone's shoulders.

”We aim to be as select here as circ.u.mstances allow,” said the lady. ”Of course it is a town inst.i.tution, I am well aware of that; but Cyrus is a select neighborhood, and there's no one feels any call to take boarders _except_ Mr. Bailey. You can see for yourself how it is, Mr. Pippin. The house is large and his own family small. He is well connected, Jacob is; his mother was own cousin to mine, and so--we thought, me and Miss Pudgkins, we'd like you to understand just how we come to be here. Not but what we could of went anywhere we pleased, if we _had_ pleased!”

Pippin was aware of a certain wistfulness in the two pairs of eyes fixed on him. Now wouldn't that give you a pain? Poor old ladies!

”I bet you could, ma'am!” he responded heartily. ”I expect you could pa.s.s all your time visitin' round, and find your welcome runnin' ahead of you like a houn' dog. But if you searched the country over, I bet you wouldn't find as pleasant a place as this. You show your taste, is what I would say.”

The wistful eyes brightened as they exchanged glances. There was a point to make with this young man; it had to be made with every newcomer.

People _must_ know that they were here for convenience' sake, and that alone!

”I knew he would understand!” cried Miss Pudgkins. ”He has that way. I see it first thing. And bein' as it is, Mr. Pippin, we try to keep up the _tone_, you see. Now Mr. Blossom--you say he's no kin to you? Well, to speak my mind--and Miss Whetstone holds with me--Mr. Blossom is _not_ just the kind Cyrus folks is accustomed to. Has he--has he led a good life, are you aware?”

Pippin smiled at her. ”Well, no, lady, he ain't; not exactly to call it _good_, you know; not what _you_ would call good, though there never was as much harm in the Old Man as in lots of others. But anyway,” he added, ”he's on the blink now, you see, liable to croak 'most any day, I should judge, so it don't so much matter, does it?”

”Liable to--I beg your pardon?”

”I beg yours. No expression to use to ladies. Pa.s.s away is what I would say. I expect his trick is about up, what say? Dandy place to pa.s.s away in, too, when your time's come. Excuse me, ladies, I see Mr. Bailey--”

Pippin saw also his opportunity of escape, and with a little bow of apology, and appreciation, slipped out of the door, thinking to join his host who had just walked past it. But Jacob Bailey had already disappeared in the shed, and it was Flora May's turn. She had followed Pippin, and now stood before him, looking up at him with clear, lovely, empty eyes: empty, yet with that curious s.h.i.+ning intentness he had noticed before.

”Sing now for Flora May!” said the girl.

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