But the tinker was contemplating his right foot; he was standing on the other. “Don’t bother about those scratches; they go rather well with the clothes, don’t you think? It’s this ankle that’s bothering me; I must have turned it when I jumped.”
“Can’t ye walk on it? Ye can lean on this”—she passed him the pilgrim staff—“and we can go slowly. Bad luck to the man! If I had known ye were hurt I’d have made ye leave him in the road and we’d have driven his machine back to Arden for him.” She looked longingly after the trail of dust.
“Your ethics are questionable, but your geography is worse. Arden isn’t back there.”
“What do ye mean? Why, I saw Arden, back yonder, with my own eyes—not an hour ago.”
“No, you didn’t. You saw Dansville; Arden is over there,” and the tinker’s hand pointed over his shoulder at right angles to the road.
“Holy Saint Branden!” gasped Patsy. “Maybe ye’ll have the boldness, then, to tell me I’m still seven miles from it?”
“You are.” But this time he did not laugh—a smile was the utmost he could manage with the pain in his ankle.
Patsy looked as if she might have laughed or cried with equal ease. “Seven miles—seven miles! Tramp the road for four days and be just as near the end as I was at the start—” An expression of enlightenment shot into her face. “Faith, I must have been going in a circle, then.”
The tinker nodded an affirmative.