"_But_," John Aymer exploded suddenly, "it _is_, as I said, an extremely rum start. I suppose you feel perfectly sure of your pet lamb, Lar?" "Perfectly--humanly speaking!" "Then that's all right. The fellow is so infernally attractive--you understand! If I thought he would make Mary unhappy, or--or anything--I'd wring his neck for him, see?" The chaplain nodded gravely. "I see! you won't have to wring his neck, Jack." "Then that's all right," repeated John Aymer. "Glad of it! He certainly is as taking a scamp as ever I saw. Is he--has he any family? Nice comfortable mother or sister who would be good to Mary, eh?" Lawrence Hadley shook his head; a slow, humorous smile curled the corners of his mouth. He heard Pippin's voice, eager, imploring. "You won't tell any one, will you, Elder? About Pa and Ma, I mean. Honest, sir, they've ben more help to me than lots of real folks I've seen. What I mean--well, I've seen folks act real ugly, you know, to their own flesh and blood; speak up real hateful, the way you wouldn't speak, no, nor I wouldn't, to a houn' dog! But these folks of mine, so good and--and so--well, kind of holy is what I mean, and yet ready to joke and laugh any time--gorry to 'Liza! Elder, I do wish you could _see_ Ma and Pa, I do so!" "No, John," said the chaplain, "I'm afraid--I have always understood that Pippin was an orphan." The friendly silence fell again, and the chaplain's thoughts reverted to his conversation with Pippin that morning. What a child the boy was! How almost incredible--if the things of God could ever be incredible, mused the chaplain--that after such a bringing-up (say, rather, dragging, kicking, cuffing up) he should be what he was. Hadley's mind, always with a whimsical thread running through its earnestness, recalled a visit to an aquarium, and certain creatures of living crystal through which such organs as they had were visible as through glass. Pippin was like that, he thought. An Israelite without guile; the child of the slums, the young desperado; Pippin the Kid, alias Moonlighter, alias Jack-o'-lantern. Strange and true, and blessed! Out of the mouths of babes--gutter babes as well as those of Christian homes! But how absurd, how utterly unreasonable, this very crystalline quality made the boy! He had thought that once he found the girl, all would be plain sailing. He had actually expected Mary to start with him, hand in hand like two children, that very morning for Cyrus Poor Farm, thirty miles away. There was folks he knowed all along the road, dandy folks, would be tickled to death to take them in; what say? The chaplain vetoing this proposal decidedly, the eager light had died out of Pippin's eyes, the anxious cloud settled again on his brow.