looked up to find the tinker peering at her sharply.
"You look clean tuckered out," he announced, baldly; then he laid a
coaxing hand on her arm. "I want you to come along with me. Will you,
lass? I've found a place for you--a nice place. I've been talkin' to
Joseph's mother, an' she's goin' to look after you for the night."
Patsy's face crinkled up all over; the tinker could not have
told--even if he had been in possession of all his senses--whether
she was going to laugh or cry. As it turned out, she did neither; she
just sighed, a tired, contented little sigh, slipping off the stool
and dropping the letter into the post-box.
When she faced the tinker again her eyes were misty, and for all her
courage she could not keep the quivering from her lips. She reached
up impulsive, trusting hands to his shoulders: "Lad--lad--how were ye
ever guessing that I'd reached the end o' my wits and was needing
some one to think for me? Holy Saint Michael! but won't I be mortial
glad to be feeling a respectable, Lebanon feather-bed under me!"
* * * * *
As the tinker led her out of the store the quorum eyed her silently
for a moment. For a brief space there was a scraping of chairs and
clearing of throats, indicative of some important comment.
"What sort of a lookin' gal did that Green County sheriff say he was
after?" inquired the storekeeper at last.
"Small, warn't it?" suggested one of the quorum.
"Yep, guess it was. And what sort o' clothes did he say she wore?"
"Brown!" chorused the quorum.
"Wall, boys"--the storekeeper wagged an accusing thumb in the
direction of the recently vacated stool--"she was small, warn't she?
An' she's got brown clothes, hain't she? An' she acts queer, doan't
she?"
The quorum nodded in solemn agreement.
"But she doan't look like no thief," interceded the youngest of the
"boys." He couldn't have been a day over seventy, and it was more
than likely that he was still susceptible to youth and beauty!
The rest glowered at him with plain disapproval, while the
storekeeper shifted the course of his thumb and wagged it at him
instead. "Si Perkins, that's not for you to say--nor me, neither.
That's up to Green County; an' I cal'ate I'll 'phone over to
the sheriff, come mornin', an' tell him our suspicions. By
Jack-a-diamonds! I've got to square my conscience."
The quorum invested their thumbs again and cleared their throats.
VII
THE TINKER PLAYS A PART
There is little of the day's happenings that escapes the ears of a
country boy. Every small item of local interest is so much grist for
his mill; and there is no more reliable method for a stranger to
collect news than a sociable game of "peg" interspersed with a few
casual but diplomatic questions. The tinker played "peg" the night
after he and Patsy reached Lebanon--on the barn floor by the light of
a bleary-eyed lantern with Joseph and his brethren, and thereby
learned of the visit of the sheriff.
Afterward he sawed and split the apportioned wood which was to pay
for Patsy's lodging, and went to sleep on the hay in a state of
complete exhaustion. But, for all that, Patsy was wakened an hour
before sun-up by a shower of pebbles on the tin roof of the porch,
just under her window. Looking out, she spied him below, a silencing
finger against his lips, while he waved a beckoning arm toward the
road. Patsy dressed and slipped out without a sound.
"What has happened ye?" she whispered, anxiously, looking him well
over for some symptoms of sickness or trouble.
His only reply was a mysterious shake of the head as he led the way
down the village street, his rags flapping grotesquely in the dawn
wind.
There was nothing for Patsy to do except to follow as fast as she
could after his long, swinging strides. Lebanon still slept,
close-wrapped in its peaceful respectability; even the dogs failed to
give them a speeding bark. They stole away as silently as shadows,
and as shadows went forth upon the open road to meet the coming day.
A mile beyond the township stone the tinker stopped to let Patsy
catch up with him; it was a very breathless, disgruntled Patsy.
"Now, by Saint Brendan, what ails ye, lad, to be waking a body up at
this time of day? Do ye think it's good morals or good manners to be
trailing us off on a bare stomach like this--as if a county full of
constables was at our heels? What's the meaning of it? And what will
the good folk who cared for us the night think to find us gone with
never a word of thanks or explanation?"
The tinker scratched his chin meditatively; it was marked by a day's
more growth than on the previous morning, which did not enhance his
comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something
about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an
uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied
him yesterday--but to-day--Patsy's gaze was critical and not
over-flattering.
He saw her look and met it, eye for eye, only he still fumbled his
chin ineffectually. "Have you forgot?" he asked, a bit sheepishly.
"There were the lady's-slippers; you said as how you cared about
findin' 'em; and they're not near so pretty an' bright if they're
left standin' too long after the dew dries."
Patsy pulled a wry little smile. "Is that so? And ye've been after
making me trade a feather-bed and a good breakfast for--for the best
color of lady's-slippers. Well, if I was Dan instead of myself,
standing here, I'd be likely to tell ye to go to the devil--aye, an'
help ye there with my two fists." Her cheeks were flushed and all the
comradeship faded quickly from her eyes.
The tinker said never a word, only his lips parted in a coaxing smile
which seemed to say, "Please go on believing in me," and his eyes
still held hers unwaveringly.
And the tinker's smile won. Bit by bit Patsy's rigid attitude of
condemnation relaxed; the comradeship crept back in her eyes, the
smile to her lips. "Heigho! 'Tis a bad bargain ye can't make the best
of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! Ye'll find the right road
to Arden this time or ye and the duke's daughter will part
company--for all Willie Shakespeare wrote it otherwise."
He nodded. "We can ask the way 's we go. But first we'll be gettin'
the lady's-slippers and some breakfast. You'll see--I'll find them
both for you, lass"; and he set off with his swinging stride straight
across country, wagging his head wisely. Patsy fell in behind him,
and the road was soon out of sight and earshot.
* * * * *
It was just about this time that the storekeeper at Lebanon got the
Green County sheriff on the 'phone, and squared his conscience. "I
cal'ate she's the guilty party," were his closing remarks. "She'd
never ha' lighted out o' this 'ere town afore Christian folks were
out o' bed ef she hadn't had somethin' takin' her. And what's more,
she's keepin' bad company."
And so it came about that all the time the sorrel mare was being
harnessed into the runabout the tinker was leading Patsy farther
afield. And so it came to pass that when the mare's heels were
raising the dust on the road between Lebanon and Arden, they were
following a forest brook, deeper and deeper, into the woods.
They found it the most cheery, neighborly, and comfortable kind of a
brook, the quiet and well-contained sort that one could step at will
from bank to bank, and see with half an eye what a prime favorite it
was among its neighbors. Patsy and the tinker marked how close things
huddled to it, even creeping on to cover stones and gravel stretches;
there were moss and ferns and little, clinging things, like
baby's-breath and linnea. The major part of the bird population was
bathing in the sunnier pools, soberly or with wild hilarity,
according to disposition.
The tinker knew them all, calling to them in friendly fashion, at
which they always answered back. Patsy listened silently, wrapped in
the delight and beauty of it. On went the brook--dancing here in a
broken patch of sunshine--quieting there between the banks of
rock-fern and columbine, to better paint their prettiness; and all
the while singing one farther and farther into the woods. She was
just wondering if there could be anything lovelier than this when the
tinker stopped, still and tense as a pointer. She craned her head and
looked beyond him--looked to where the woods broke, leaving for a few
feet a thinly shaded growth of beech and maple. The sunlight sifted
through in great, unbroken patches of gold, falling on the beds
of fern and moss and--yes, there they were, the promised
lady's-slippers.
A little, indrawn sigh of ecstasy from Patsy caused the tinker to
turn about. "Then you're not hatin' gold when you find it growin'
green that-a-way?" he chuckled.
Patsy shook her head with vehemence. "Never! And wouldn't it be grand
if nature could be gathering it all up from everywhere and spinning
it over again into the likes of those! In the name o' Saint Francis,
do ye suppose if the English poets had laid their two eyes to
anything so beautiful as what's yonder they'd ever have gone so daffy
over daffodils?"
"They never would," agreed the tinker.
Patsy studied him with a sharp little look. "And what do ye know
about English poets, pray?"
His lower jaw dropped in a dull, foolish fashion. "Nothin'; but I
know daff'dils," he explained at last.
And at that moment the call of a thrush came to them from just across
the glade. Patsy listened spellbound while he sang his bubbling song
of gladness through half a score of times.
"Is it the flowers singing?" she asked at last, her eyes dancing
mischievously.
"It might be the souls o' the dead ones." The tinker considered
thoughtfully a moment. "Maybe the souls o' flowers become birds, same
as ours becomes angels--wouldn't be such a deal o' difference--both
takin' to wings and singin'." He chuckled again. "Anyhow, that's the
bellbird; and I sent him word yesterday by one o' them tattlin'
finches to be on hand just about this time."
"Ye didn't order a breakfast the same way, did ye?"
The tinker threw back his head and laughed. "I did, then," and,
before Patsy could strip her tongue of its next teasing remark, he
had vanished as quickly and completely as if magic had had a hand in
it.
A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going,
however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor
fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady's-slippers. She
unpinned the rakish beaver and tossed it from her; off came the
Norfolk jacket, and followed the beaver. She eyed the rest of her
costume askance; she would have sorely liked to part with that, too,
had she but the Lord's assurance that He would do as well by her as
he had by the lilies of the field or the lady's-slippers.
"'Tis surprising how wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the
back of a human being--yet a flower can wear them for a thousand
years or more and ye never go tired of them. I'm not knowing why,
but--somehow--I'd like to be looking gladsome--to-day."
She stretched her arms wide for a minute, in a gesture of intense
longing; then the glory of the woods claimed her again and she gave
herself over completely to the wonder and enjoyment of them. Her eyes
roamed about her unceasingly for every bit of prettiness, her ears
caught the symphony of bird and brook and soughing wind. So still did
she sit that the tinker, returning, thought for a moment that she had
gone, and stood, knee-deep in the brakes, laden to the chin and
covered with the misery of poignant disappointment. For him all the
music of the place had turned to laughing discord--until he spied
her.
"I thought"--his tongue stumbled--"I was thinkin' you had
gone--sudden-like--same as you came--down the road yesterday." He
paused a moment. "You wouldn't go off by yourself and leave a lad
without you said somethin' about it first, would you?"
"I'll not leave ye till we get to Arden."
"An'--an' what then?"
"The road must end for me there, lad. What I came to do will be done,
and there'll be no excuse for lingering. But I'll not forget to wish
ye 'God-speed' along your way before I go."
A sly look came into the tinker's eyes. Patsy never saw it, for he
was bending close over the huge basket he had brought; she only
caught a tinge of exultation in his voice as he said, "Then that's
a'right, if you'll promise your comp'ny till we fetch up in Arden."
With that he went busily about preparations for breakfast, Patsy
watching him, plainly astonished. He gathered bark and brush and
kindled a fire on a large flat rock which he had moved against a
near-by boulder. About it he fastened a tripod of green saplings,
from which he hung a coffee-pot, filled from the brook.
"I'm praying there's more nor water in it," murmured Patsy. And a
moment later, as the tinker shook out a small white table-cloth from
the basket and spread it at her feet, she clasped her hands and
repeated with perfect faith, "'Little goat bleat, table get set'; I
smell the coffee."
Out of the basket came little green dishes, a pat of butter, a jug of
cream, a bowl of berries, a plate of biscuits. "Riz," was the
tinker's comment as he put down the last named; and then followed
what appeared to Patsy to be round, brown, sugared buns with holes in
them. These he passed twice under her nose with a triumphant
flourish.
"And what might they be?" Her curiosity was reaching the
breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll
believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the
faeries' trencher of plenty."
For reply the tinker dived once more beneath the cover and brought
out a frying-pan full of bacon, and four white eggs. "Think whatever
you're mind to, I'm going to fry these." But after he had raked over
the embers to his complete satisfaction and placed the pan on them,
he came back and, picking up one of the "brown buns," slipped it over
Patsy's forefinger. "This is a wishin'-ring," he announced, soberly,
"though most folks calls 'em somethin' different. Now if you wish a
wish--and eat it--all but the hole, you'll have what you've been
wishin' for all your life."
"How soon will ye be having it?"
"In as many days as there are bites."
So Patsy bit while the tinker checked them off on his fingers. "One,
two, three, four, five, six. You'll get your wish by the seventh day,
sure, or I'm no tinker."
[Illustration: "If you wish a wish and eat it--all but the hole,
you'll have what you've been wishin' for all your life."]
"But are ye?" Patsy shook the de-ringed finger at him accusingly.
"I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether ye're a tinker at all.
Ye are foolish one minute, and ye've more wits than I have the
next; I've caught ye looking too lonesome and helpless to be allowed
beyond reach of our mother's kerchief-end, and yet last night and the
day ye've taken care of me as if ye'd been hired out to tend babies
since ye were one yourself. As for your language, ye never speak
twice the same."
The tinker grinned. "That bacon's burnin'; I--cal'ate I'd better turn
it, hadn't I?"
"I--cal'ate you had," and Patsy grinned back at him derisively.
The tinker was master of ceremonies, and he served her as any
courtier might have served his liege lady. He shook out the
diminutive serviette he had brought for her and spread it across her
lap; he poured her coffee and sweetened it according to direction; he
even buttered her "riz" biscuits and poured the cream on her berries.
"Are ye laboring under the delusion that the duke's daughter was
helpless, entirely?" she asked, at length.
The tinker shook an emphatic negative. "I was just thinkin' she might
like things a mite decent--onct in a while."
"Lad--lad--who in the wide world are ye!" Patsy checked her outburst
with a warning hand: "No--don't ye be telling me. Ye couldn't turn
out anything better nor a tinker--and I'd rather keep ye as I found
ye. So if ye have a secret--mind it well; and don't ye be letting it
loose to scare the two of us into over-wise, conventional folk. We'll
play Willie Shakespeare comedy to the end of the road--please God!"
"Amen!" agreed the tinker, devoutly, as he threw her portion of fried
eggs neatly out of the pan into her plate.
It was not until she was served that he looked after his own wants;
then they ate in silence, both too hungry and too full of their own
thoughts to loosen their tongues.
Once the tinker broke the silence. "Your wish--what was it?" he
asked.
"That's telling," said Patsy. "But if ye'll confess to where ye came
by this heavenly meal, I might confess to the wish."
He rubbed his chin solemnly for an instant; then he beamed. "I'll
tell ye. I picked it off o' the fern-tops and brambles as I came
along."
"Of course ye did," agreed Patsy, with fine sarcasm, "and for my
wish--I was after thinking I'd marry the king's son."
They looked at each other with the teasing, saucy stare of two
children; then they laughed as care-free and as merrily.
"Maybe you'll get your wish," he suggested, soberly.
"Maybe I will," agreed Patsy, with mock solemnity.
A look of shrewdness sprang into the tinker's face. "But you said you
hated gold. You couldn't marry a king's son 'thout havin' gold--lots
of it."
"Aye--but I could! Couldn't I be making him throw it away before ever
I'd marry him?" And Patsy clapped her hands triumphantly.
"An' you'd marry him--poor?" The tinker's eyes kindled suddenly, as
he asked it--for all the world as if her answer might have a meaning
for him.
Patsy never noticed. She was looking past him--into the
indistinguishable wood-tangle beyond. "Sure, we wouldn't be poor.
We'd be blessed with nothing--that's all!"
For those golden moments of romancing Patsy's quest was forgotten;
they might have reached Arden and despatched her errand, for all the
worriment their loitering caused her. As for the tinker, if he had
either a mission or a destination he gave no sign for her to reckon
by.
They dallied over the breakfast; they dallied over the aftermath of
picking up and putting away and stamping out the charred twigs and
embers; and then they dallied over the memory of it all. Patsy spun a
hundred threads of fancy into tales about the forest, while the
tinker called the thickets about them full of birds, and whistled
their songs antiphonally with them.
"Do ye know," said Patsy, with a deep sigh, "I'm happier than ye can
tell me, and twice as happy as I can tell ye."
"An' this, hereabouts, wouldn't make a bad castle," suggested the
tinker, irrelevantly.
What Patsy might have answered is not recorded, for they both
happened to look up for the first time in a long space and saw that
the sky above their heads had grown a dull, leaden color. They were
no longer sitting in the midst of sunlight; the lady's-slippers had
lost their golden radiance; the brook sounded plaintive and
melancholy, and from the woods fringing the open came the call of the
bob-white.
"He's singin' for rain. Won't hurt a mite if we make toward some
shelter." The tinker pulled Patsy to her feet and gathered up the
basket and left-overs.
"Hurry," said Patsy, with a strange, little, twisted smile on her
lips. "Of course I was knowing, like all faery tales, it had to have
an ending; but I want to remember it, just as we found it
first--sprinkled with sunshine and not turning dull and gray like
this."
She started plunging through the woods, and the tinker was obliged to
turn her about and set her going right, with the final instruction
to follow her nose and he would catch up with her before she had
caught up with it. She had reached the road, however, and thunder was
grumbling uncomfortably near when the tinker joined her.
"It's goin' to be a soaker," he announced, cheerfully.
"Then we'd better tramp fast as we can and ask the first person we
pass, are we on the right road to Arden."
They tramped, but they passed no one. The road was surprisingly
barren of shelters, and, strangely enough, of the two houses they saw
one was temporarily deserted and the other unoccupied. The wind came
with the breaking of the storm--that cold, piercing wind that often
comes in June as a reminder that winter has not passed by so very
long before. It whipped the rain across their faces and cut down
their headway until it seemed to Patsy as if they barely crawled.
They came to a tumble-down barn, but she was too cold and wet to stop
where there was no fire.
"Any place that's warm," she shouted across to the tinker; and he
shouted back, as they rounded the bend of the road.
"See, there it is at last!"
The sight of a house ahead, whose active chimney gave good evidence
of a fire within, spurred Patsy's lagging steps. But in response to
their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the
narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even
before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter.
"Faith, 'tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred
years ago," Patsy murmured between tightening lips. "How long in, do
ye think, the fashion has been--to shut doors on poor wanderers?"
At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The
woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier
was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they
turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had
crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks
ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them.
"Curse them!" muttered the tinker, fiercely. "If I only had a coat to
put around you--anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry
inside there!" and he shook his fist at the forbidden door.
Patsy tried to smile, but failed. "Faith! I haven't the breath to
curse them; but God pity them, that's all."
Before she had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang
it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll
have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood."
He hurried her along--somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression
closed her eyes; and she let him lead her--whither she neither
wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she
stumbled along, conscious of but two things--a fear that she would be
ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for
heat--heat!
When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing
under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer
cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet.
In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of
the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small,
leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a
matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted
over the sill into the kitchen beyond.
"Ye'd best stand me in the sink and wring me out, or I'll flood the
house," Patsy managed to gasp. "I'd do it myself, but I know, if I
once let go of my hands, I'll shake to death."
The tinker followed her advice, working the water out of her dripping
garments in much the same fashion that he would have employed had she
been a half-drowned cat. In spite of her numbness Patsy saw the grim
humor of it all and came perilously near to a hysterical laugh. The
tinker unconsciously forestalled it by shouldering her, as if she had
been a whole bag of water-soaked cats, and carrying her up the
stairs. After looking into three rooms he deposited her on the
threshold of a fourth.
"It has the look of women folks; you're sure to find some left-behind
clothes o' theirs hanging up somewhere. Come down when you're dry an'
I'll have that fire waiting for you."
What followed was all a dream to Patsy's benumbed senses: the search
in drawers and closets for things to put on, and the finding of them;
the insistent aching of fingers and arms in trying to adjust them,
and the persistent refusal of brain to direct them with any degree of
intelligence. She came down the stairs a few minutes later, dragging
a bundle of wet clothes after her, and found the tinker kneeling by
the hearth, still in his dripping rags, and heaping more logs on the
already blazing fire.