With silence between them they ate until their lips were red and the cloud of dust on the hill back of them had whirled past, attendant on a sorrel mare and runabout. They ate until the road was quite empty once more; and then the tinker pulled Patsy to her feet by way of reminding her that Arden still lay beyond them.
“Do ye know,” said Patsy, after another silence and they were once more afoot, “I’m a bit doubtful if the banished duke’s daughter ever tasted anything half as sweet as those berries on her road to Arden; or, for that matter, if she found her fool half as wise. I’m mortial glad ye didn’t fall off that stump this morning afore I came by to fetch ye off.”
The tinker doffed his battered cap unexpectedly and swept her an astounding bow.
“Holy Saint Christopher!” ejaculated Patsy. “Ye’ll be telling me ye know Willie Shakespeare next.”
But the tinker answered with a blank stare, while the far-away, bewildered look of fear came back to his eyes. “Who’s he? Does he live ’round here?” he asked, dully.
Patsy wrinkled a perplexed forehead. “Lad, lad, ye have me bursting with wonderment! Ye are a rare combination, even for an Irish tinker; but if ye are a fair sample of what they are over here, sure the States have the Old Country beaten entirely.”
And the tinker laughed as he had laughed once before that day—the free, untrammeled laugh of youth, while he saucily mimicked her Irish brogue. “Sure, ’tis the road to Arden, ye were sayin’, and anythin’ at all can happen on the way.”
The girl laughed with him. “And ye’ll be telling me next that this is three hundred years ago, and romance and Willie Shakespeare are still alive.” Her mind went racing back to the “once-upon-a-time days,” the days when chivalry walked abroad—before it took up its permanent residence between the covers of story-books—when poets and saints, kings’ sons and—tinkers journeyed afar to prove their manhood in deeds instead of inheritances; when it was no shame to live by one’s wits or ask hospitality at any strange door. Ah—those were the days! And yet—and yet—could not those days be given back to the world again? And would not the world be made a merrier, sweeter place because of them? If Patsy could have had her way she would have gone forth at the ring of each new day like the angel in the folk tale, and with her shears cut the nets that bound humanity down to petty differences in creed or birth or tongue.
“Faith, it makes one sick,” she thought. “We tell our children the tales of the Red Branch Knights—of King Arthur and the Knights of the Grail—and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints—simple men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the Holy Book—the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about, looking for some good deed to do, some helpfulness to give, some word of good cheer to speak; and we pray, ‘Father, make us good—even as Thou wert.’ And what does it all mean? We hurry through the streets afeared to stop on the corner and succor a stranger, or ashamed to speak a friendly word to a troubled soul in a tram-car; and we go home at night and lock our doors so that the beggar who asked for a bit of bread at noon can’t come round after dark and steal the silver.” Patsy sighed regretfully—if only this were olden times she would not be dreading to find Arden now and the man she was seeking there.