"Any place that's warm," she shouted across to the tinker; and he shouted back, as they rounded the bend of the road.
The sight of a house ahead, whose active chimney gave good evidence of a fire within, spurred Patsy's lagging steps. But in response to their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter.
"Faith, 'tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred years ago," Patsy murmured between tightening lips. "How long in, do ye think, the fashion has been--to shut doors on poor wanderers?"
At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them.
"Curse them!" muttered the tinker, fiercely. "If I only had a coat to put around you--anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry inside there!" and he shook his fist at the forbidden door.
Patsy tried to smile, but failed. "Faith! I haven't the breath to curse them; but God pity them, that's all."
Before she had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood."
He hurried her along--somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression closed her eyes; and she let him lead her--whither she neither wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she stumbled along, conscious of but two things--a fear that she would be ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for heat--heat!
When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet. In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small, leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted over the sill into the kitchen beyond.