[CHAPTER VIII]
PIPPIN SETS BREAD AND LAYS A PLAN
THE Baxters received Pippin with open arms. 'Peared like he had been away a week, they said, instead of just over night. They certainly had missed him. No, they hadn't set the dough yet: they were just thinking of it, but they thought likely—well, hadn't he better have his supper first? No such great hurry, though of course 'twas about time—
"Gimme five minutes," said Pippin, "and then just watch me!"
In five minutes, washed and brushed, spotless in white cap and apron, his arms bare to the shoulder, he appeared shouting for his task.
Everything was white in the bakery; shining white of tiles and vessels, soft white of scoured pine, softer white of snowy flour. The great caldron stood ready, under the chute that led from the upper floor. Pippin pressed a knob, and down came the flour, in a steady stream. Pretty, Pippin thought, to watch it piling up in a soft cone, falling away in tiny avalanches, piling up again.
Another touch; the stream is checked. Now for the salt and sugar. Now yeast, milk and water, half and half: more whiteness, brimming in a white pail. In it goes, with wonderful effects of bubbling and creaming, while snowy clouds float up and settle on Pippin's brown face and sinewy arms.
He touches another knob; down comes the iron dasher—this, too, shining in white enamel—and round and round it goes, tossing, dropping, gathering, tossing again, steadily, patiently; that is the way they mix bread at Baxter's bakery.
Pippin watches it, fascinated; he never tires of the wonder of it. But presently Mrs. Baxter calls. "Supper, Pippin, come now! Buster'll mind Elbert for you."
Elbert is the dasher, named for the brother baker who persuaded Father Baxter to give up hand mixing and take to machinery. Pippin gives the machine a friendly pat. "Good old Elbert!" he says. "Keep it up, old figger-head! I'll be back, time you're ready to lay off. She's all right, Buster," as the boy enters, munching his final doughnut. "In great shape, Elbert is! You want to scrape her down a mite—" give it twenty masculine names, and a machine must still be feminine—"when she gets balled up, that's all. She's just as sensible—why, she can all but talk, this machine can."
"Mourns good and plenty," chuckles Buster, "when she's dry."