“Who are ye? Ye know I’d give the full of my empty pockets to know who ye are, and what started ye tramping the road—in rags.”
The tinker considered a moment. “Perhaps I took the road because I believed it led to the only place I cared to find. Perhaps I lost the way to it, as you lost yours to Arden, and in the losing I found—something else. Perhaps—perhaps—oh, perhaps a hundred things; but I’ll make another bargain with you. I’ll tell you all about it when we reach Arden, if you’ll tell me the name of the lad you came to find.”
“I’ll do more than that—I’ll bring ye together and let ye help mend him,” and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain.
They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten his hunger.
“Well?” queried Patsy at last. “A ha’penny for them.”
“I’m thinking the same old thoughts I’ve thought a hundred times already—since that first day: What makes you so different from everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your gospel of kindness—on your lips and in your hands?”
“Would ye really like to know?” Patsy’s fingers stole through the grass about them. “Faith! the world’s not so soft and green as this under every one’s feet. Ye see ’twas by a thorn I was found hanging to that Killarney rose-bush in Brittany, and I’ve always remembered the feeling of it.”
“I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and letting the rest of the world hug theirs.”
“I don’t believe it!” Patsy shook her head fiercely. “What’s the use of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if it can’t put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn’t it the best thing in the world?”