Then—and this was what Mrs. Appleby had been waiting and hoping for, came the injunction: "Now sing, Grindy Man!"
Pippin sang; and the mite of fractious quicksilver lay back on the pillow with a happy sigh. The matron dropped her sewing, and took out her handkerchief; she was easily moved to tears, good Mrs. Appleby. Downstairs from the housekeeper's room, upstairs from kitchen, dining-room, pantry, eager footsteps came stealing. Soon the whole household was sitting on the stairs, listening, and Mrs. Appleby was resolutely unaware of them, reflecting that some things were more important than others, and that nobody would die if dinner was a little late.
Sing, Pippin! Pour your heart out, and lift up the hearts of all that hear you, sad hearts and merry, dull hearts and quick, for with them you shall lift up your own also, till your eyes shine with their own glad light, and you go your way, once more joyful in the Lord:
"Fling out the life line with hand quick and strong:
Why do you tarry, why linger so long?
See! he is sinking; oh, hasten today—
And out with the Life-Boat! Away, then, away!"
[CHAPTER XXI]
MARY BLOSSOM
TO Pippin the last month had passed like a watch in the night; say rather in the day, a watch on a hillside under a clear sky, with the sound of flutes in the air. But at Cyrus Poor Farm it had been a long month, and things had gone rather heavily. Brand, weaving baskets in his corner, thought it one of the longest months he had ever known. There had been many wet, cold days when the barn had been too chilly to work in, and though he loved the big kitchen, he preferred solitude for his work hours,—solitude, that is, enlivened by snatches of cheery talk as Jacob Bailey came and went about his own work, by whiffs of fragrant clover and hay, by the sunlight that lay warm upon him as he sat in the wide doorway, by the friendly whinnying of Molly, the pretty black mare, in her loose box close by.
Then Flora May would come drifting in, and would sit down beside him, and rub her smooth cheek against his, and coo and murmur like a white pigeon. They were intimate, the blind man and the simple girl. He was Uncle Brand, she was his little gal. They spoke little as they sat together, but now and then he would pat her fair head and say, "We knowed it, little gal!" and she would nestle closer and repeat, "We knowed it!" That was all the speech they needed.
But now Flora May seldom came to the barn; she seemed almost to avoid him, Brand thought. Maybe it was just the bad weather; she was apt to be moody in bad weather. But even in the house she was changed, somehow. She used always to give him a pat or a coo when she passed him; now—but he must not be demanding. Blind folks were apt to be demanding, he had once been told, and had resolved no one should have cause to say it of him.