The tinker was a very good-looking young man, almost apostolic in type, with a golden red aureole of hair and beard and candid blue eyes.  These latter filled with tears as their owner continued:—­

“He was like a brother for me; sure he follied me from home.  ’Twas he was dam wise!  Sure at home all me mother’d say to him was, “Where’s the ducks, Captain?” an’ he wouldn’t lave wather nor bog-hole round the counthry but he’d have them walked and the ducks gethered.  The pigs could be in their choice place, wherever they’d be he’d go around them.  If ye’d tell him to put back the childhren from the fire, he’d ketch them by the sleeve and dhrag them.”

The requiem ceased, and the tinker looked grievingly into his hat.

“What is your name?” asked Mrs. Alexander sternly.  “How long is it since you left home?”

Had the tinker been as well acquainted with her as he was afterwards destined to become, he would have been aware that when she was most judicial she was frequently least certain of what her verdict was going to be.

“Me name’s Willy Fennessy, me lady,” replied the tinker, “an’ I’m goin’ the roads no more than three months.  Indeed, me lady, I think the time too long that I’m with these blagyard thravellers.  All the friends I have was poor Captain, and he’s gone from me.”

“Go round to the kitchen,” said Mrs. Alexander.

The results of Willy Fennessy’s going round to the kitchen were far-reaching.  Its most immediate consequences were that (1) he mended the ventilator of the kitchen range; (2) he skinned a brace of rabbits for Miss Barnet, the cook; (3) he arranged to come next day and repair the clandestine devastations of the maids among the china.

He was pronounced to be a very agreeable young man.

Before luncheon (of which meal he partook in the kitchen) he had been consulted by Patsey Crimmeen about the chimney of the kennel boiler, had single-handed reduced it to submission, and had, in addition, boiled the meal for the hounds with a knowledge of proportion and an untiring devotion to the use of the potstick which produced “stirabout” of a smoothness and excellence that Miss Barnet herself might have been proud of.

“You know, mother,” said Freddy that evening, “you do want another chap in the garden badly.”

“Well it’s not so much the garden,” said Mrs. Alexander with alacrity, “but I think he might be very useful to you, dear, and it’s such a great matter his being a teetotaler, and he seems so fond of animals.  I really feel we ought to try and make up to him somehow for the loss of his dog; though, indeed, a more deplorable object than that poor mangy dog I never saw!”

“All right:  we’ll put him in the back lodge, and we’ll give him Bizzy as a watch dog.  Won’t we, Bizzy?” replied Freddy, dragging the somnolent Bismarck from out of the heart of the hearthrug, and accepting without repugnance the comprehensive lick that enveloped his chin.