We cannot watch Pippin through this search, which took several days. True, there were only two Children's Homes in the city; but the approaches to them were devious, and Pippin's methods were his own. First he must find a bakery in the neighborhood of the Home, the one most nearly approaching the perfection of Baxter's. Here he must linger for an hour or more, talking bakery gossip, discussing yeast, milk powder, rotary ovens, and dough dividers; sharpening the knives, too, mostly for brotherly love, for was not he a (temp'ry) baker as well as knife-grinder? Here he would ask casually about the joint whose red brick or gray stone walls towered near by. Home for kids, was it? Well, that was a dandy idea, sure! Did the baker supply—did? Had their own baker, but took his buns and coffee-cake reg'lar? He wanted to know! Well, talkin' of coffee-cake—here yarns might be swapped for a matter of half an hour. Then the baker would be asked what kind of a man the boss was? Or was she a woman? Was? Well—well, even if so! Thursday was visitors' day, was it? Well, he wouldn't wonder a mite but what he'd look in there some Thursday. Pretty to see a lot of kids together, what?
His first visit to the stone Home with the mullioned windows was a short one. The black-robed superintendent was courteous, but cool; she was not interested in either grinding or bakeries. There had been several red-haired girls at the Home in her time, but none named Mary Blossom, none corresponding with Pippin's description. Was he a relative? No? She was much occupied—"Good morning!"
"She don't want no boes in hers!" said Pippin thoughtfully, as he bore Nipper out of the paved courtyard. "I don't blame her, not a mite!"
At the red-brick Home with the green fanlight over the door his reception was more cordial. The kindly, rosy face of the Matron beamed responsive to his smile. The morning was bright, and she had just heard of a thousand-dollar legacy coming to the Home, so her own particular shears needed sharpening, and she superintended the process (she had a grass plot to stand on, too, instead of a pavement) and they had a good dish of talk, as she told the Assistant later.
Hearing Pippin's brief account of his quest, she meditated, her mind running swiftly back over the years of her superintendence.
"A child of six or eight!" she repeated thoughtfully. "With hair like a yearling heifer's! Why, we have had many children with red hair; the sandy kind, and the bricky, and the carrotty—and the auburn; but none of them sound just like the child you describe. Then, the parents! You never saw the mother, you say? What was the father like?"
"Like a crook!" said Pippin promptly.
"Dear me! That is a pity. Can you describe him? Not that I ever saw him, but the child might have resembled him—"
"Not her!" Pippin averred confidently. "The old man never looked like anything but—well, call it mud and plaster, and you won't be far off. Now the little gal was a pictur. Hair like I said, and eyes—well, first they'd be blue and then they'd be brown, like in runnin' water; know what I mean? And the prettiest way of speakin' you ever—"