“If I’ve not misplaced my memory, ’twas myself that chose the company, and ’twas largely on account of those very things, I’m thinking. Do ye guess for a minute that if ye had been a rich man’s son in grand clothes—and manners to match—I’d ever have tramped a millimeter with ye?” She smiled coaxingly. “Faith! there’s naught the matter with those rags; a king’s son might be proud o’ them. As for foolishness, I’ve known worse faults in a man.”
The tinker winced imperceptibly, and all unconsciously Patsy went on: “’Tis the heart of a man that measures him, after all, and not the wits that crowd his brain or the gold that lines his pockets. Oh, what do the folks who sit snug by their warm hearthsides, knitting their lives into comfortables to wrap around their real feelings and human impulses, ever know about their neighbors who come in to drink tea with them? And what do the neighbors in turn know about them? If I had my way, I’d tumble the whole sit-by-the-fire-and-gossip world out of doors and set them tramping the road to somewhere; ’tis the surest way of getting them acquainted with themselves and the neighbors. For that matter, all of us need it—just once in so often. And so—to the road, say I, with a fair greeting to all alike, be they king’s son or beggar, for the road may prove the one’s the other afore the journey’s done.”
“Amen!” said the tinker, devoutly, and Patsy laughed.
They had stopped in the middle of the street, midway between the church and the engine-house, Patsy so absorbed in her theories, the tinker so absorbed in Patsy, that neither was aware of the changed disposition of their circling escort until a cold, inquisitive nose and a warm, friendly tongue brought them to themselves. Greetings were returned in kind; heads were patted, backs stroked, ears scratched—only the children stood aloof and unconvinced. That is ever the way of it; it is the dogs who can better tell glorious vagabondage from inglorious rascality.
“Sure, ye can’t fool dogs; I’d be taking the word of a dog before a man’s anywhere when it comes to judging human beings.” Patsy looked over her shoulder at the children. “Ye have the creatures won over entirely; ’tis myself might try what I could do with the wee ones. If we had the dogs and the childther to say a good word for us—faith! the grown-ups might forget how terribly respectable they were and make us welcome for one night.” A sudden thought caught her memory. “I was almost forgetting why I had come. Hunt up a shop for me, lad, will ye? There must be one down the street a bit; and if ye’ll loan me some of that half-crown the good man paid for your tinkering, I’d like to be having a New York News—if they have one—along with the fixings for a letter I have to be writing. While ye are gone I’ll bewitch the childther.”
And she did.
When the tinker returned she was sitting on the church steps, the children huddled so close about her that she was barely distinguishable in the encircling mass of shingled heads, bobby curls, pigtails and hair-ribbons. Deaf little ears were being turned to parental calls for supper—a state of affairs unprecedented and unbelievable; while Patsy was bringing to an end the tale of Jack, the Irish hero of a thousand and one adventures.
“And he married the king’s daughter—and they lived happier than ye can tell me—and twice as happy as I can tell ye—in a castle that had a window for every day in the year.”
“That would make a fine endin’ for any lad’s story,” said the tinker, soberly. “‘A window for every day in the year’ would mean a whole lot of cheerfulness and sunshine, wouldn’t it?”