"What I meant—" the baker ran his eye along a pile of loaves, and straightened one that had slipped out of place—"isn't it making rather free with—ahem! what say?"
"Oh!" Pippin's face lightened. "I get you! Now I get you, sir! Lemme tell you! Lemme tell you just the way it is." Fairly stammering in his eagerness, Pippin leaned across the counter, his eyes shining. "You see, sir, I was raised a crook!"
"Hush!" Mr. Baxter looked over his shoulder. "No need to speak out loud, Pippin. Just as well to keep that between ourselves, you know."
"I was raised," Pippin repeated in a lower tone, "a crook, and I heard—and used—crooks' language. Nor it isn't only crooks!" he cried, smiting the counter. "Where I was raised, 'most everybody had the name of God on their tongues every hour in the day, but not in the way of praisin' Him; no, sir! There's plenty folks—good folks, too—they can't name hardly anything, whatever be it, without 'God damn' before it. You know that, Mr. Baxter. You know what street talk is, sir." The baker nodded gravely. "Well, then! That's what I was raised to, and it run off my tongue like water, till—till I come to know Elder Hadley. I'm tol'able noticin', sir; I expect crooks is, when they're all there; you have to be, to get on. I noticed right off the way he spoke, clean and short and pleasant, no damnin' nor cussin'; and I liked it, same as I liked clean folks and despised dirty ones. That was all there was to it at first. But yet I couldn't stop all of a sudden; it took time, same as anything does, to learn it. Then—come to find the Lord, like I told you, sir, why—I dunno how to put it. I'd ben askin' Him all my life to damn everything, this, that, and the other, folks, and—everything, I say; I didn't mean it, 'twas just a fool way of speakin', but what I thought was, supposin' I was to ask Him to help right along, 'stead of damn, and make it mean something! What say? You get my idea, Mr. Baxter, sir?"
Mr. Baxter nodded again. "I get it, Pippin. I won't say anything more."
"But yet—but yet—" Pippin was stammering again, and halfway across the counter in his passion of eagerness. "I get you, too, Boss! I do, sure thing. You mean it brings some folks up short, like that gen'leman that stepped in just now? He's no use for me, I see that right off; I wondered why, and now 'tis clear as print. I'd oughter sized him up better. Take that kind of man, and he may be good as they make 'em, prob'ly is; but yet—well—you say the Lord's name excep' in the way of cussin'—I don't mean that he's that kind himself—but—it's like he stubbed his toe on the Lord's ladder, see?"
"You've got it! you've got it!" the baker was nodding eagerly in his turn. He laughed and rubbed his hands. "Stubbed his toe on—on the Lord's ladder! I—I expect I stub mine a mite, too, Pippin, but I won't say another word."
"'Cause we're awful glad the ladder's there, ain't we, sir?" Pippin's voice was wistful enough now.
"Ahem! Yes! yes!" The baker took out a clean red handkerchief and rubbed an imaginary spot on the shining glass. "That's all right, Pippin. Do what comes natural to you; only—what are you doing now?"
There was a little stove in the shop, behind the middle counter, used for "hotting up" coffee or the like when people were in a hurry. Pippin, after a glance at the clock, had taken some pennies out of the till, and was laying them carefully on the top of the stove, which glowed red hot.