Seven Miles to Arden Part 10

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 b.u.t.ter, 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 pa.s.sed 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 wis.h.i.+n'-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 wis.h.i.+n' 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "If you wish a wish and eat it--all but the hole, you'll have what you've been wis.h.i.+n' 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 b.u.t.tered 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 G.o.d!"

"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 s.p.a.ce 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.s, are we on the right road to Arden."

They tramped, but they pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 G.o.d 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, la.s.s; I'll have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood."