[CHAPTER XXV]
PIPPIN OVERCOMES
WELL, how about it?" said John Aymer.
A council was being held in the pleasant parlor with the rose-colored shades. John Aymer, Lucy his wife, and Lawrence Hadley, his wife's brother, were sitting together, talking of things with which we have some concern.
"How about it?" repeated the hardware merchant. He planted both elbows on his knees, rested his chin on his hands, and, as he would have said, squared away for action. The others looked up inquiringly. "Pippin is your hunt, Larry, and from your point of view—and his—he is on the right track, and it's all highcockolorum Erin go Bragh. But Mary is our hunt, Lucy's and mine, and we don't feel so sure about all this."
"I do part of the time, John!" Mrs. Aymer spoke with a certain timidity, unlike her usual gay decisiveness. "When I talk with Larry, or see Pippin—even just look at him—it seems all as right as right; but then—"
"But then you look at Mary, and it doesn't. See here, Lar!" John Aymer laid down his pipe, a token of strong interest with him. "Pippin is what you call a mystic and I call a glorified crank. All he wants in the world—beside Mary—is a chance to help, as he says; and it's great. I know it is, and I'm proud to know the chap, and all that. But that isn't all Mary wants!"
The chaplain looked up with a grave nod of comprehension.
"Mary Blossom," John Aymer went on, "is a fine girl, and she's an ambitious girl. She has done well herself, got a first-rate education of its kind, made herself a first-rate all-round young woman, capable of doing—within limits—anything she sets her hand to. Now—she's as dead stuck on Pippin as he is on her—"
"John! What language! She adores him, if that is what you mean."