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"Now if," pursued the Tinker, "if you'm minded, both on ye, for to j'ine comp'ny and travel the country awhile along o' Diogenes an' me say the word, an' I'll be the j'y-fullest tinker 'twixt here an' John o' Groat's!" As he ended, Diana reached out suddenly and, catching his hand, fondled those work-roughened fingers against her soft cheek.
"A tinker I am, O a tinker am I, A tinker I'll live, and a tinker I'll die; If the King in his crown would change places wi' me I'd laugh so I would, and I'd say unto he: 'A tinker I am, O a tinker am I, A tinker I'll live, and a tinker I'll' "
So has it always been with chemistry, the most cosmopolitan of sciences, the most secret of arts. Quietly and stealthily it crept through the world; the tinker brought it with his solder and his flux; the African tribes who were the first workers in iron passed it on to the great metallurgists who forged Damascan and Toledan steel.
'Pon my soul, he's like the game we used to do with cherry-stones round the pudding plate. Don't you know? Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, and all the rest. He's all those things, and has two pair of bags to his name, and lives in a cart, and's a gentleman. Not a doubt about that, mind you, Mrs. Germain." She smiled upon him kindly. "None at all," she said. "I like him extremely."
"On me life, it is cold," said the tinker, opening a small stove and beginning to whittle shavings, "'Cold as a dead man's nose. Be seated, an' try try to be happy." There was an old rocker and two small chairs in the room. "I do not feel the cold," said Trove, taking one of them. "Belike, good youth, thou hast the rose of summer in thy cheeks," said the old man.
They hated each other. One had nicknamed the other "the melancholy tinker." There was Sainte-Beuve, a distinguished but inferior man, having a pardonable fondness for ugliness. A great critic like Cousin is a great philosopher. There was Troplong, who had had Dupin for Procurator, and whom Dupin had had for President. Dupin, Troplong; the two side faces of the mask placed upon the brow of the law.
He suggested that Harding would not have much difficulty in making himself up for a postman, and getting inside the up-town house in that capacity, trusting to his own skill to remain within until he had made the necessary investigations; while as for himself well, he had no particular objections to entering temporarily upon the occupation of a tinker or a gatherer of old rags and bottles, with a disguise from his friend Williams, the costumer, and working the basement of the house on Prince Street, and the domestics therein employed, in one of those capacities.
"Well, on me word, I am full sorry," said the tinker. "Though mind ye, boy, fear is an excellent good thing, an' has done a work in the world. But, hear me, a man had two horses the same age, size, shape, an' colour, an' one went for fear o' the whip, an' the other went as well without a whip in the wagon. Now, tell me, which was the better horse?" "The one that needed no whip."
The tinker looked long at the crown-piece, and then sliding it into his pocket, said to himself, "Ho, 'ush-money! No go, my swell cove." After venting that brief soliloquy he sat silent a little while, till Leonard was nearly out of sight; then rose, resumed his fardel, and creeping quick along the hedgerows, followed Leonard towards the town.
That night, as he lay asleep, he heard a strange noise near his pillow; so he peeped out from under the bedclothes, and there he saw the kettle that he had bought in the temple covered with fur, and walking about on four legs. The tinker started up in a fright to see what it could all mean, when all of a sudden the kettle resumed its former shape.
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