"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--" "_Why, you've seen her!_ You didn't say you had seen her." Pippin looked helplessly into the clear gray eyes that had suddenly grown sharp and piercing. "I--don't--know!" he said. "Don't know what?" "Whether I see her, or whether I just--" He stopped to sigh and run his fingers through his hair, almost knocking his file out. "I expect I'll have to explain!" he said. "I think you will!" The tone was not harsh, but it was firm and decided. The Matron had seen many people, and was not to be beguiled by the brightest eyes or the most winning smile. Moreover, the "pictur" Pippin had conjured up had brought a corresponding image on her mental kinetoscope; she, too, saw the child with eyes like running water and the prettiest way of speaking; saw and recognized. Pippin sighed again. "When I say I don't know," he said slowly, "it's because I don't! Just plain that! When I said the way that gal looked, it--well, it's like it wasn't me that said it, but somebody else inside me. Why, I spoke it right off like it was a piece: 'twas as if _somebody_ knew all along what that little gal looked like. Now--" The Matron took him up sharply. "As if somebody knew? What do you mean by 'somebody'?" Light came to Pippin. Why, of course! "I expect it's a boy!" he said. "What boy?" "I expect it's the boy I used to be. I forget him most of the time, but nows and thens he speaks up and gives me to understand he's there all right. You see, lady, when I was a boy, there was a little gal--somewheres near where I lived, I expect; and she had--yes, she sure had hair that color, and eyes that same kind. And when you spoke just now, it all come back, and seemed like 'twas the boy tellin', not me in a present way of speakin'. I don't know as you see what I'm drivin' at, but I don't know as I can put it any plainer." "What kind of boy were you?" "Guttersnipe!" "Where did you live?" Pippin described the cellar as well as he could. It was no longer in existence, he had ascertained that. Where it had yawned and stunk, a model tenement now stood prim and cheerful.