"Ah!" nodded the Tinker, "to be sure you did."
"A pedler of brooms, and ribands--"
"'Gabbing' Dick!" nodded the Tinker.
"Who told me very seriously--"
"That I'd been found in the big holler oak wi' my throat cut,"
nodded the Tinker.
"But what did he mean by it?"
"Why, y' see," explained the Tinker, leaning over to turn a
frizzling bacon-rasher very dexterously with the blade of a
jack-knife, "y' see, 'Gabbing' Dick is oncommon fond of murders,
hangings, sooicides, and such like--it's just a way he's got."
"A very unpleasant way!" said I.
"But very harmless when all's done and said," added the Tinker.
"You mean?"
"A leetle weak up here," explained the Tinker, tapping his
forehead with the handle of the jack-knife. "His father was
murdered the day afore he were born, d'ye see, which druv his
poor mother out of her mind, which conditions is apt to make a
man a leetle strange."
"Poor fellow!" said I, while the Tinker began his tap-tapping
again.
"Are you hungry?" he inquired suddenly, glancing up at me with
his hammer poised.
"Very hungry!" said I. Hereupon he set down his hammer, and,
turning to a pack at his side, proceeded to extract therefrom a
loaf of bread, a small tin of butter, and a piece of bacon, from
which last he cut sundry slices with the jack-knife. He now
lifted the hissing rashers from the pan to a tin plate, which he
set upon the grass at my feet, together with the bread and the
butter; and, having produced a somewhat battered knife and fork,
handed them to me with another bright nod.
"You are very kind!" said I.
"Why, I'm a man as is fond o' company, y' see--especially of one
who can think, and talk, and you have the face of both. I am--as
you might say--a literary cove, being fond o' books, nov-els, and
such like." And in a little while, the bacon being done to his
liking, we sat down together, and began to eat.
"That was a strange song of yours," said I, after a while.
"Did you like it?" he inquired, with a quick tilt of his head.
"Both words and tune," I answered.
"I made the words myself," said the Tinker.
"And do you mean it?"
"Mean what?" asked the Tinker.
"That you would rather be a tinker than a king?"