“Well, I cal’ate we’ve got to, too.”
“Sure thing!”
“Ye’ll never say a word, then—about seein’ her; nuthin’ to give the sheriff a hint where she might be?”
“Why, mother!” The man laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with accusing eyes. “Hain’t you known me long enough to know I couldn’t tell on any one who’d been good to—” He broke off with a cough. “And what’s more, do you think any one who could take our little boy’s hand and lead him, as you might say, straight to heaven—would be a thief? No, siree!”
It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim staff gripped tightly in her hand. She clung to it as the one tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him, leaving behind no reason for his going, no hope of his coming again; Billy Burgeman was still but a flimsy promise; and Joseph had outstripped them both, passing beyond her farthest vision. Small wonder, then, that the road was lonely and haunted for Patsy, and that she plodded along shorn of all buoyancy.
Her imagination began playing tricks with her. Twice it seemed as if she could feel a little lad’s hand, warm and eager, curled under hers about the staff; another time she found herself gazing through half-shut eyes at a strange lad—a lad of twelve—who walked ahead for a space, carrying two great white roses; and once she glanced up quickly and saw the tinker coming toward her, head thrown back and laughing. Her wits had barely time to check her answering laugh and hands outstretching, when he faded into empty winding road.
The morning was uneventful. Patsy stopped but once—to trundle a perambulator laden with washing and twins for its small conductor, a mite of a girl who looked almost too frail to breast the weight of a doll’s carriage.
Even Patsy puffed under the strain of the burden. “How do you do it?” she gasped.