"Yes, I'd take it from you." The tinker rolled over with a little moan composed of physical pain and mental discomfort. But in another moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as she disappeared through the door. "Remember--no help from the quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of assistance to a--beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down about me. Remember!" "Aye," she called back; "I'll be remembering." * * * * * She reached the road again; and for the manyeth time since she left the women's free ward of the City Hospital she marshaled all the O'Connell wits. But even the best of wits require opportunity, and to Patsy the immediate outlook seemed barren of such. "There's naught to do but keep going till something turns up," she said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter. She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a cross-road. She looked to the right--it was empty. She looked to the left--and behold there was "Opportunity," large, florid, and agitated, coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight of herself and her bag. "Ze depot--how long ees eet?" she demanded, when she caught sight of Patsy. The accent was unmistakably French, and Patsy obligingly answered her in her mother-tongue. "I cannot say exactly; about three--four kilometers." "Opportunity" dropped her bag and embraced her. "Oh!" she burst out, volubly. "Think of Zoe Marat finding a countrywoman in this wild land. _Moi_--I can no longer stand it; and when madame's temper goes _pouffe_--I say, it is enough; let madame fast or cook for her guests, as she prefer. I go!" "_Eh, bien!_" agreed the outer Patsy, while her subjective consciousness addressed her objective self in plain Donegal: "Faith! this is the maddest luck--the maddest, merriest luck! If yonder Quality House has lost one cook, 'twill be needing another; and 'tis a poor cook entirely that doesn't hold the keys of her own pantry. Food from Quality House needn't be choking the maddest tinker, if it's paid for in honest work." Having been embraced by "Opportunity," Patsy saw no reason for wasting time in futile sympathy that might better be spent in prompt execution. She despatched the woman to the station with the briefest of directions and herself made straight for Quality House. She was smiling over her appearance and the incongruities of the situation as she rang the bell at the front door and asked for "Madame" in her best parisien.