Pippin; A Wandering FlameRichards, Laura Elizabeth Howe
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Pippin; A Wandering Flame
Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe
Bildungsromans; Ex-convicts -- Fiction; Love stories; Orphans -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
If you or I had looked over his shoulder, we should have seen at once
that some of these were unfamiliar tools. A screw driver--yes! a pair of
nippers--yes! a file--yes! but what were these three little shining
objects which Pippin was fitting together with eager, trembling fingers?
Now they are joined and make a slender bar of solid steel, one end
flattened to a sharp edge. That is a jimmy, and Pippin is looking with
shining eyes at a miniature but perfect set of burglar's tools.
"Now wouldn't that--" said Pippin. Sitting back on his heels, he took
the tools out one by one and examined them carefully, handling them
like a lover, whistling meantime, slowly and thoughtfully, the air
devoted to the aged steeple-climber. He ran his eye along their edges;
he rang them on a stone to test their perfection. "_Com_-plete!" he
muttered. "These certingly are a complete outfit. Now I ask you
honest, would--not--that--give you a pain in your--" Pippin confused
the human interior with the gallinaceous. How should he know that we
have no gizzard?
"Old Nipper!" he continued. "Only to think of the slickness of him! Went
round with his wheel, innocent appearin' as you please, and when he saw
a likely crib, he'd up and crack it with these little daisies, just as
easy--"
He stopped abruptly, as a light broke in upon him. _This_ was what Old
Man Blossom meant. This was why he laffed and 'most had a pupplectic
fit; and no wonder! Here was he, Pippin, singing and praying, and all
the time taking a cracksman's kit along with him wherever he went! No
wonder the old rip laughed! Now question was, what to do with 'em?
What say? No one was near; he was alone in the green murmuring place;
yet some one did certainly seem to be speaking. Pippin cocked his ear to
listen.
A shame to destroy good tools, pretty set like this, prettiest he ever
saw or like to see? Might come in handy for any kind of work--even the
jimmy? Any one might want to use a bar--farmin' like, or--
The strong brown fingers seemed to close of themselves, without will of
his, round the tools, fondling them. Something like quicksilver ran
crinkling through him--
"Now HONEST!" said Pippin. "Just watch me, will you?"
A flash in the sunlight where it broke through the leafy screen; a
silver splash--the lucky bugs scattered in terror, and a solemn bullfrog
tumbled headfirst off the stone from which he had been watching. Another
flash and splash, and now a whole shower of them. Sang Pippin:
"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!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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