It was not until he was half-way down the stairs again that he called out, bravely, “Oh—I say—Miss—O’Connell; you’d better change your mind and eat something.”
He waited a good many minutes for an answer, but it came at last; the voice sounded broken and wistful as a crying child’s. “Thank—you!” and then, “Could ye be after telling me how far it is from here to Arden?”
“Let me see—about—seven miles;” and the tinker laughed; he could not help it.
The next instant Patsy’s door opened with a jerk and the tray was precipitated down the stairs upon him. It was the conclusive evidence of the O’Connell temper.
But the tinker never knew that Patsy wept herself remorsefully to sleep; and Patsy never knew that the last thing the tinker did that night was to cut a bedraggled brown coat and skirt and hat into strips and burn them, bit by bit. It was not altogether a pleasant ceremony—the smell of burning wool is not incense to one’s nostrils; and the tinker heaved a deep sigh of relief as the last flare died down into a heap of black, smudgy embers.
“That Green County sheriff will have a long way to go now if he’s still looking for a girl in a brown suit,” he chuckled.
Sleep laid the O’Connell temper. When Patsy awoke her eyes were as serene as the patches of June sky framed by her windows, and she felt at peace with the world and all the tinkers in it.
“’Twould be flattering the lad too much entirely to make up with him before breakfast; but I’ll be letting him tramp the road to Arden with me, and we’ll part there good friends. Troth, maybe he was a bit lonesome,” she added by way of concession.