Patsy studied him with a sharp little look. “And what do ye know about English poets, pray?”
His lower jaw dropped in a dull, foolish fashion. “Nothin’; but I know daff’dils,” he explained at last.
And at that moment the call of a thrush came to them from just across the glade. Patsy listened spellbound while he sang his bubbling song of gladness through half a score of times.
“Is it the flowers singing?” she asked at last, her eyes dancing mischievously.
“It might be the souls o’ the dead ones.” The tinker considered thoughtfully a moment. “Maybe the souls o’ flowers become birds, same as ours becomes angels—wouldn’t be such a deal o’ difference—both takin’ to wings and singin’.” He chuckled again. “Anyhow, that’s the bellbird; and I sent him word yesterday by one o’ them tattlin’ finches to be on hand just about this time.”
“Ye didn’t order a breakfast the same way, did ye?”
The tinker threw back his head and laughed. “I did, then,” and, before Patsy could strip her tongue of its next teasing remark, he had vanished as quickly and completely as if magic had had a hand in it.
A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going, however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady’s-slippers. She unpinned the rakish beaver and tossed it from her; off came the Norfolk jacket, and followed the beaver. She eyed the rest of her costume askance; she would have sorely liked to part with that, too, had she but the Lord’s assurance that He would do as well by her as he had by the lilies of the field or the lady’s-slippers.
“’Tis surprising how wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the back of a human being—yet a flower can wear them for a thousand years or more and ye never go tired of them. I’m not knowing why, but—somehow—I’d like to be looking gladsome—to-day.”