“Maybe a hundred things,” moaned Patsy, disconsolately; “maybe ’tis all a dream and there’s no road and no quest and no Rich Man’s son and no tinker, and no anything. Maybe—I’ll be waking up in another minute and finding myself back in the hospital with the delirium still on me.”
She closed her eyes, rubbed them hard with two mandatory fists, then opened them to test the truth of her last remark; and it happened that the first object they fell on was a photograph in a carved wooden frame on the mantel-shelf in the room across the hall. It was plainly visible from where Patsy stood by the stairs—it was also plainly familiar. With a run Patsy was over there in an instant, the photograph in her hands.
“Holy Saint Patrick, ’tis witchcraft!” she cried under her breath. “How in the name of devils—or saints—did he ever get this taken, developed, printed, and framed—between the middle of last night and the beginning of this morning!”
For Patsy was looking down at a picture of the tinker, in white flannels, with head thrown back and laughing.
IX
PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION
With the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation, three meals—a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room after room she searched, closet after closet.
In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she passed them slowly—so slowly that her hands brushed them with a friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and consequently told no tales.