Part 19 (2/2)

”Well--I'll forgive ye this time if ye'll agree that the dinner was good, for I'd hate like the devil to be giving the wee man back his cap for anything but the best.”

With laggard grace the tinker stretched his hands over the now empty basket and gripped Patsy's. ”La.s.s, la.s.s--what are you thinking of me?

Faith! my manners are more ragged than my clothes--and I'm not fit to be a--tinker. The dinner was the best I ever ate, and--bless ye and the cluricaun!”

Patsy cooked for three days at Quality House, that the tinker might feast night and morning to his heart's content while his ankle slowly mended. But he still persisted questioning concerning his food--where and how Patsy had come by it; she still maintained as persistent a silence.

”I've come by it honestly, and 'tis no charity fare,” was the most she would say, adding by way of flavor: ”For a sorry tinker ye are the proudest I ever saw. Did ye ever know another, now, who wanted a written certificate of moral character along with every morsel he ate?”

According to wage agreement she had the kitchen to herself; no one entered except on matters of necessity; no one lingered after her work was despatched. Madame came twice daily to confer with Patsy on intricacies of gestation, while she beamed upon her as a probationed soul might look upon the keeper of the keys of Paradise. But the days held more for Patsy than sauces and entrees and pastries; they held gossip as well. Soupcons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in through open window and swinging door--straight from the dining-room and my lady's chamber. Most of it pa.s.sed her ears, unheeded; it was but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and baking--until news came at last that concerned herself--gossip of the Burgemans, father and son.

The butler and the parlor maid were cleaning the silver in the pantry--and the slide was raised. As transmitters of gossip they were more than usually concerned, for had not the butler at one time served in the house of Burgeman, and the maid dusted next door?

Therefore every item of news was well ripened before it dropped from either tongue, and Patsy gathered them in with eager ears.

The master of Quality House happened to be a director of that bank on which the Burgeman check of ten thousand had been drawn. It had been the largest check drawn to cash presented at the bank; and the teller had confessed to the directors that he would never have paid over the money to any one except the old man's son. In fact, he had been so much concerned over it afterward that he had called up the Burgeman office, and had been much relieved to have the a.s.surance of the secretary that the check was certified and perfectly correct. Not a second thought would have been given to the matter had not the secretary's resignation been made public the next day--the day Billy Burgeman disappeared.

Patsy's ears fairly bristled with interest. ”That's news, if it is gossip. Where is the secretary now? And which of them has the ten thousand?”

The director had touched on the subject of the check the next day when business had demanded his presence at the Burgeman home. The result had been distinctly baffling. Not that the director could put his finger on any one suspicious point in the behavior of Burgeman, senior; but it left him with the distinct impression that the father was s.h.i.+elding the son.

”Aye, that's what Billy said his father would do--s.h.i.+eld him out of pride.” Patsy dusted the flour from her arms and stood motionless, thinking.

Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of the hands: ”He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in shoe-laces and collar-b.u.t.tons, I dare say. That's the way rich men's sons keep their fathers' incomes from getting too c.u.mbersome.”

Burgeman, senior, had been ill then--confined to his room; but the next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two statements were not merely gossip, but facts.

Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of Billy's guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were pa.s.sing through the kitchen on their way to the servants' hall.

”Of course he took it”--the maid's tone was positive--”those rich men's sons always are a bad lot.”

”'E didn't take it, then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on 'im--that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as lief work for the devil!” And the butler pounded his fist for emphasis.

It took all Patsy's self-control to refrain from launching into the argument herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself, however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that Patsy could recall with rapidity.

When the kitchen was empty once more Patsy systematically gathered together all that she knew and all that she had heard of Billy Burgeman, and weighed it against the bare possible chance she might have of helping him should she continue her quest. And in the end she made her decision unwaveringly.

”Troth! a conscience is a poor bit of property entirely,” she sighed, as she stood the pate-sh.e.l.ls on the ledge of the range to dry. ”It drives ye after a man ye don't care a ha'penny about, and it drives ye from the one that ye do. Bad luck to it!”

That night Patsy sat under the trees with the tinker while he ate his supper. A half-grown moon lighted the feast for them, for Patsy took an occasional mouthful at the tinker's insistence that dining alone was a miserably unsociable affair.

”To watch ye eat that pate de fois gras a body would think ye had been reared on them. Honest, now, have ye ever tasted one before in your life?”

”I have.”

”Then--ye have sat at rich men's tables?”

”Or perhaps I have begged at rich men's doors. Maybe that is how I came to have a distaste for their--charity.”

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