As she stopped in front of the figure he turned his head slowly and gazed at her with an expression as far away and bewildered as a lost baby’s.
In the half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural—a strange spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth. This was borne in upon Patsy’s consciousness, and it set her Celtic blood tingling and her eyes a-sparkling.
“He looks as half-witted as those back in the Old Country who have the second sight and see the faeries. Aye, and he’s as young and handsome as a king’s son. Poor lad!” And then she called aloud, “’Tis a brave day, this.”
“Hmm!” was the response, rendered impartially.
Patsy’s alert eyes spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at the man’s feet and they set a-dancing. “Then ye are a tinker?”
“Hmm!” was again the answer. It conveyed an impression of hesitant doubt, as if the speaker would have avoided, if he could, the responsibility of being anything at all, even a tinker.
“That’s grand,” encouraged Patsy. “I like tinkers, and, what’s more, I’m a bit of a vagabond myself. I’ll grant ye that of late years the tinkers are treated none too hearty about Ireland; but there was a time—” Patsy’s mind trailed off into the far past, into a maze of legend and folk-tale wherein tinkers were figures of romance and mystery. It was good luck then to fall in with such company; and Patsy, being more a product of past romance than present civilization, was pleased to read into this meeting the promise of a fair road and success to her quest.
Moreover, there was another appeal—the apparent helpless bewilderment of the man himself and his unreality. He was certainly not in possession of all his senses, from whatever world he might have dropped; and helplessness in man or beast was a blood bond with Patsy, making instant claim on her own abundant sympathies and wits.
She held the tinker with a smile of open comradeship while her voice took on an alluring hint of suggestion. “Ye can’t be thinking of hanging onto that stump all day—now what road might ye be taking—the one to Arden?”