A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY
The railroad ran under the suspension-bridge. Patsy could see the station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured. The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished—after a fashion, and with persistent rebelling on the tinker’s part and scolding on Patsy’s. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering hands, threw it over the bridge, and started down the road at his old, swinging stride.
“Is it after more lady’s-slippers ye’re dandering?” called Patsy.
“More likely it’s after a pair of those wingèd shoes of Perseus; I’ll need them.” But his stride soon broke to a walk and then to a lagging limp. “It’s no use,” he said at last; “I might keep on for another half-mile, a mile at the most; but that’s about all I’d be good for. You’ll have to go on to Arden alone, and you can’t miss it this time.”
Patsy stopped abruptly. “Why don’t ye curse me for the trouble I have brought?” She considered both hands carefully for a minute, as if she expected to find in them the solution to the difficulty, then she looked up and away toward the rising woodland that marked Arden.
“Do ye know,” she said, wistfully, “I took the road, thinking I could mend trouble for that other lad; and instead it’s trouble I’ve been making for every one—ye, Joseph, and I don’t know how many more. And instead of doling kindness—why, I’m begging it. Now what’s the meaning of it all? What keeps me failing?”
“‘There’s a divinity that shapes’—” began the tinker.
But Patsy cut him short. “Ye do know Willie Shakespeare!”
He smiled, guiltily. “I’m afraid I do—known him a good many years.”
“He’s grand company; best I know, barring tinkers.” She turned impulsively and, standing on tiptoe, her fingers reached to the top of his shoulders. “See here, lad, ye can just give over thinking I’ll go on alone. If I’m cast for melodrama, sure I’ll play it according to the best rules; the villain has fled, the hero is hurt, and if I went now I’d be hissed by the gallery. I’ve got ye into trouble and I’ll not leave ye till I see ye out of it—someway. Oh, there’s lots of ways; I’m thinking them fast. Like as not a passing team or car would carry ye to Arden; or we might beg the loan of a horse for a bit from some kind-hearted farmer, and I could drive ye over and bring the horse back; or we’ll ask a corner for ye at a farm-house till ye are fit to walk—”