Chapter 5

"The tinker's a wonder entirely," she said to herself; "but I would like to be knowing, did he or did the shopkeeper do the choosing?" Then she remembered the thing above all others that she needed to know, and swung about on the stool to address the quorum. "I say--can you tell me where I'd be likely to find a--person by the name of Bil--William Burgeman?"

"That rich feller's boy?"

Patsy nodded. "Have you seen him?"

The quorum thumbed the armholes of their vests and shook an emphatic negative. "Nope," volunteered the storekeeper; "too early for him or his sort to be diggin' out o' winter quarters."

"Are you sure? Do you know him?"

"Wall, can't say exactly ef I know him; but I'd know ef he'd been hangin' round, sartin. Hain't been nothin' like him loose in these parts. Has there, boys?"

The quorum confirmed the statement.

Patsy wrinkled up a perplexed forehead. "That's odd. You see, he should have been here last night, to-day at the latest. I had it from somebody who knew, that he was coming to Arden."

"Mebby he was," drawled the storekeeper, while the quorum cackled in appreciation; "but this here is a good seven miles from Arden."

Patsy's arms fell limp across the counter, her head followed, and she sat there a crumpled-up, dejected little heap.

"By Jack-a-diamonds!" swore the storekeeper. "She 'ain't swoomed, has she, boys?"

The quorum were on the verge of investigating when she denied the fact--in person. "Where am I? In the name of Saint Peter, what place is this?"

"This? Why, this is Lebanon."

She smiled weakly. "Lebanon! Sounds more like it, anyhow. Thank you."

She turned about and settled down to the paper while the "boys" reverted to their original topic of discussion. There were two items of news that interested her: Burgeman, senior, was critically ill; he had been ill for some time, but there had been no cause for apprehension until the last twenty-four hours; and Marjorie Schuyler had left for San Francisco--on the way to China. She was to be gone indefinitely.

"The heathen idols and the laundrymen are welcome to her," growled Patsy, maliciously. "If they'd only fix her with the evil eye, or wish such a homesickness and lovesickness on her that 'twould last for a year and a day, I'd forgive her for what she's made me wish on myself."

Having relieved her mind somewhat, she was able to attend to the business of the letter with less inward discomfort. The letter was written to George Travis, already known as the manager of Miss St. Regis. He was the head of a well-known theatrical managerial firm in New York, and an old friend and well-wisher of Patsy's. In it she explained, partly, her continued sojourn in America, and frankly confessed to her financial needs. If he had anything anywhere that she could do until the fall bookings with her own company, she would be most humbly grateful. He might address her at Arden; she had great hopes of reaching there--some day. There was a postscript added in good, pure Donegal:

And don't ye be afeared of hurting my pride by offering anything too small. Just at present I'm like old Granny Donoghue's lean pig--hungry for scrapings.

As she sealed the envelope a shadow fell athwart the counter. Patsy 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."

"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!"