The stroke succeeded. The jackknife brought to murderous sharpness, the mistress of the bakery declared that the others could wait. Soon Pippin was enjoying to the full what he declared a breakfast that a king would cry for: eggs and bacon, coffee and rolls, all excellent of their kind.
"I wonder why they call it coffee over there!" he confided to his stick. "'Cause if this is, that ain't, you see! But 'twas good as I deserved! That's the way they look at it, I take it; and I expect they're right. No, ma'am, not another morsel. I'm full as much obliged to you. That sure was a good meal! Now I'm ready to sharpen all the knives and scissors in the county. I'll stand my wheel close to the door where it won't be in folks' way, and then just watch me!"
The baker's wife brought an apronful of knives and scissors, and Pippin set to work, blessing the Old Man, who had put him in the tool shop for six months and made him keep the tools in order while old Grindstone was laid up with rheumatism. Old Grindstone! Pippin wondered what his real name was. "They called him Grindstone, account of a song he used to sing when he was grindin'. He said 'grinstone' where I say 'grindstone,' and I always maintained I had reason, because it grinds; but he thought otherwise, and he'd grind away—wonderful hand he was at it; in for twenty years, and ground all the time except when laid up as he was now and again; arson, though he says he never knew there was any one in the house, and anyway they was got out alive, though some damaged—well—so he'd grind away, the old man would, and all the time he'd sing in a kind of dry, wheezy voice:
"Grin, grinstone, grin!
Grin, grinstone, grin!
When you're out
You roam about,
But it's otherwise when you're in—grin!
It's otherwise when you're in! Grin!
It's otherwise when you're in!"
Pippin's voice rang out round and full; his wheel turned merrily, the blades flashed in the sun. A little crowd gathered round him, watching the whirling wheel. Looking up, he saw some children among them. Was this quite the song for them? He checked himself and broke out with
"There was an old man
And he was mad—"
The children clustered nearer.
"Sing another!" said a little flaxen-haired girl in a pink pinafore.
Pippin looked at her approvingly, and reflected that she was the very moral of the "little gal," that little sister he had—or as good as had, almost! He ran over his repertory: most of the prison songs were not what her ma would choose—certainly not! But—there was one the cook's boy used to sing—how did that go?
"Dum de rido! dum de rido!
I had a little dog, and his name was Fido—"