He stared before him, as one seeing visions at once strange and familiar. A cellar, dark and noisome, under a city street: an old woman in a long blue cloak and a white cap, crouching over a spark of fire: a half-naked child playing on the naked floor: in a corner a man sprawling half-drunk, smoking a clay pipe. The child stumbles over the man's feet, is clutched and held fast in one hand while the other shakes the burning dottle from the pipe on the little bare back.
"To larn ye manners!" growls the man.
The woman rises painfully, totters across the cellar and brings down her staff with astonishing force on the man's head—"She must have been a hundred!" Pippin thinks—bidding him get out for the drunken brute he is. Whack! Whack! The second blow brings the man staggering to his feet and out of the door, protesting thickly, "I was only larnin' him manners! He'll remember that, see if he don't."
The child shrieked when the fire touched him; he is now whimpering piteously. The old woman finds a rag and rubs something cooling on his back, muttering some words—what were they? Pippin racks corners of his memory.
"White—white—patter, was it?" And then, "St. Peter's brother," and—no, it is gone. But he knows the other! He sees her now take the child's two hands in hers, hears her croon the unforgettable words to the unforgettable tune:
There was an old man,
And he was mad,
And he ran up the steeple.
He took off
His great big hat,
And waved it over the people!
"I won't forget that!" said Pippin. "No, nor I won't forget the whole of Granny Faa: some parts I'll keep. She was good to me many a time, and give me snuff out of her box. But I'll forget Dod Bashford all right. Just watch me—"
He paused, for the vision came again. A dark night, a dark house, shrubbery gleaming wet about it. A match flickers, carefully sheltered by brawny hands, and shows a small window, as of a pantry, standing partly open. Somebody is bidden with an oath to "boost the kid up!" A boy of ten is seized by other hands and raised to the window. "Get in!" says a rough whisper. "Round to your left and open the first door. If you make a noise, I'll cut your heart out!" For some reason—it is not clear what—the boy is unwilling, hangs back, struggling in air, pushing away from the window-sill toward which he is thrust. "Will you?" growls the rough voice, and the lighted match is held to his leg. Still the child struggles dumbly for a little; at last, with a smothered shriek, he gives up and climbs in at the window.
"Green grass!" mutters Pippin. "I'll forget that: watch me!"
He blinked twice or thrice, then straightened himself. "There!" said Pippin. "There ain't no such folks in the world. I don't know as there ever was—except old Granny! I'll keep her in it, 'long of them things she done for me. And anyhow Granny was out of it before we begun to do auto sneakin', country houses, and like that. She was dead by that time. Now, son, you think of all the good folks you know. Count 'em over, what say? Take the other taste out of your mouth, see? There's Elder Hadley first and foremost: keep your eyes on him right straight along: he's like—like a window that's open, and no bars to it, and you see the Lord through it, some way. Then there's the Warden, and Mis' Warden—gee! remember that dinner she sent me in one day I pulled her little tad out the water? There was—" Pippin's eyes kindled—"roast beef, mashed potatoes—" he was checking the items off on his fingers—"fried parsnips, pickles, apple pie—green grass! that was a dinner! And she sent it to me by name, and her thanks, Elder Hadley said, all because I see that kid fall into the cistern and hauled him out. Well! and the kid—some kid that!—and he follerin' me round after that, every chanst he got; and the others, too, and nothin' doin' but I must sing to 'em. And then old Pete! gee! Pete'll miss me, and me him. You make brooms 'longside of a guy for a year and you know what each other thinks; and Pete is all right!"