The baker was puzzled at first by his new assistant; as the good man himself expressed it, he didn't get on to Pippin's curves. There were things that jarred--for a time--on his sensibilities; as thus. They were together in the shop one evening, and a customer came in for his evening loaf; the shoemaker it was, Jere Cargo, a man of dry, critical humor. He commented on the loaf; it was a shade deeper brown than usual. "One minute more, young man, and that loaf would have been burnt, that's what!" Pippin scanned the loaf carefully. "Is that so?" he said. "Now! Why, I was pleased with this batch, I thought the Lord give me an elegant bake on it: that's what I _thought_! But if folks likes 'em pale, why, pale it is!" The shoemaker stared; Mr. Baxter coughed apologetically as he accompanied him to the door, and--on a summoning jerk of the head--followed him outside. "What have you got there?" asked the shoemaker. "A preacher? Where'd you get him?" "No, he isn't a preacher, though I dare say he might have been, if he'd had education. He's just pious, that's all. It's his way of talking." His tone was conciliatory, but the shoemaker sniffed. "'Just pious!'" he repeated. "Look out for 'em, I say, when they're just pious. They'll bear watching. Where'd you say he come from?" "He's traveling!" Mr. Baxter knew his customer, and had no idea of telling him whence Pippin came. "He's a scissor-grinder by trade, and a master hand at it. I hurt my hand last week, and he come along just in the nick of time and has been helping me since. Real good help he is, too." "Humph!" said Jere Cargo, shrugging his dry shoulders. "You look out for him, that's all I say. Sharp-looking chap, I call that; he'll bear watching." Returning to the shop, Mr. Baxter coughed again, this time with his eye on Pippin, who was arranging a tray of creamcakes with a lover's ardor. "Ain't them handsome?" he cried. "I ask you, Boss, ain't them handsome? And dandy to eat--green grass! Mis' Baxter give me one. _They_ drop fatness all right, no two ways about that!" Here Pippin broke into song, proclaiming joyously that he was a pilgrim, he was a stranger, he could tarry, he could tarry but a night. "Do not detain me, For I am going--" "Ahem!" said Mr. Baxter, "I was thinking, Pippin--" Pippin came to attention instantly. "Yes, sir! You was thinkin'--" "I was wondering--" the baker spoke slowly, in a tone half admonitory, half conciliatory, and wholly embarrassed--"whether maybe you--just in a manner, you understand, just in a manner--was in the habit of making a mite too free with--with your Maker, so to speak." Pippin's eye grew very round. "Meanin'--with the Lord?" he said.