And the new cook? Her work despatched, and her kitchen to herself, she was free to get dinner for one more of madame’s guests.
“Faith! he’d die of a black fit if he ever knew he was a guest of Quality House—and she’d die of another if she found out whom she was entertaining. But, glory be to Peter! what neither of them knows won’t hurt them.” And Patsy, unobserved, opened the back door and retraced the road to the deserted stable with a full basket and a glad heart.
She found the tinker under some trees at the back, smoking a disreputable cuddy pipe with a worse accompaniment of tobacco. When he saw her he removed it apologetically.
“It smells horrible, I know. I found it, forgotten, on a ledge of the stable, but it keeps a chap from remembering that he is hungry.”
“Poor lad!” Patsy knelt on the ground beside him and opened her basket. “Put your nose into that, just. ’Tis a nine-course dinner and every bit of the best. Faith! ’tis lucky I was found on a Brittany rose-bush instead of one in Heidelberg, Birmingham, or Philadelphia; and if ye can’t be born with gold in your mouth the next best thing is a mixing-spoon.”
“Meaning?” queried the tinker.
“Meaning—that there’s many a poor soul who goes hungry through life because she is wanting the knowledge of how to mix what’s already under her nose.”
The tinker looked suspiciously from the contents of the basket to Patsy, kneeling beside it, and he dropped into a shameless mimicry of her brogue. “Aye, but how did she come by—what’s under her nose? Here’s a dinner for a king’s son.”
“Well, I’ll be letting ye play the king’s son instead of the fool to-night, just, if ye’ll give over asking any more questions and eat.”
“But”—he sniffed the plate she had handed him with added suspicion—“roast duck and sherry sauce! Honest, now—have ye been begging?”