Before he had sung the song through once, doors and windows would be opening, housewives peering out, children running to gather round the magic wheel, listening open-mouthed to the singer. It was all play to Pippin; wonderful, beautiful play.
"I tell you," he would say, "I tell you, seems though just to breathe was enough to keep gay on. Over there to Shoreham—I dunno—I expect the air got discouraged, some way of it. They'd open the windows, but the outside air was shy of comin' in—like the rest of us! But out here in the open—and things lookin' like this—green grass! I'm happy, and don't you forget it!"
Sometimes he got a lift on his way. Solitary drivers, plodding along the road, and seeing the trim, alert figure ahead stepping out briskly with its wheel, were apt to overhaul it, and after a glance at Pippin's face would most likely ask, "Goin' along a piece? Like a lift?" and Pippin, with joyous thanks, would climb eagerly in, all ready to begin a new chapter of human intercourse.
Once, so clambering, he found himself beside a tall man, brown-eyed and brown-haired, who drove a brown horse. Pippin's eyes were brown, too, but they danced and sparkled like running water; the stranger's eyes were like a quiet pool under shady trees, yet there was light in them, too.
"Goin' far?" he asked. His voice was grave, and he spoke slowly.
"Four Corners was what I'd aimed at," said Pippin, "but if you ain't goin' that way—?"
"Goin' right past it, on my reg'lar route! I do business there to the store. I see you carry your trade with you, same as I do!" He jerked his head backward toward a neat arrangement of drawers and tiny cupboards which half filled his roomy wagon. "Nice trade, I expect?"
Pippin laughed his joyous laugh. "Real nice, only it isn't mine, not for keeps, I would say. 'Twas a—well, you might call it a legacy, and you wouldn't be far wrong. It come right to my hand when I was lookin' for a job, and I took it up then and there. Yes, sir, 'tis a good trade, and a man might do well at it, I don't doubt, but yet I don't feel it to be my own trade that I was meant for. So I go about seekin' for that one, and workin' at this one, and helpin' in the bakery—Baxter's to Kingdom; I'm boardin' there—helpin' there mornin's an' evenin's."
The brown eyes studied him carefully.