"Dear lad, you were only jesting, I know," he said. "But it is not well to dwell on such fantastic things too much, though we constantly remind ourselves that they are nonsense. The human mind is a very wonderful and delicate piece of mechanism, and if once we begin playing experiments with a thing of which we understand so little, it may get out of order, and strike the wrong hour, and fail to keep time. Lead your wholesome, honourable life, dear boy, and take gratefully what happiness comes in your way, and do not forget where it comes from. Then you will have nothing to fear from the Luck."
"No, and nothing to gain from it," said Harry, "for I suspect magic can not touch those who do not believe in it."
"Dear boy, enough," said Mr. Francis, with a certain earnestness. "You have told me you do not believe in it. Ah, what a wonderful evening! Look at those pink fleeces of cloud in the west, softer than sleep, softer than sleep, as Theocritus says. How I wish I was a painter! Think of the privilege of being able to show those sunset glories; to show, too, as the true artist can, the feelings, infinite and subtle, which those rose clouds against the pale blue of the sky produce in one, to show them to the toiler of the London streets. Ah, Harry, what a wealth of senses has been given us, what diverse-facing windows to our souls, and how little we trouble to look out of any, or to keep bright and clean even one! The gourmet even, the man who eats his dinner, using his palate with intelligence, is a step above most people. He has trained a sense, and what exquisite pleasure that sense, even though it be the most animal of all, gives him! And who can say that each sense was not given us in order that we should cultivate it to the fullest?"
Suddenly he raised his hat, and in a low, clear voice he cried:
"O world as God has made it, all in beauty,
And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
What further can be sought for or declared?"
For a long moment he stood there, his face irradiated by the fires of sunset, his eyes soft with gentle, unshed tears, his hair stirred by the caress of the evening breeze, with who knows what early dreams and cool reveries of boyhood reminiscent within him? His harsh, untoward past had gone from him; he had lived backward in that moment to the days before troubles and darkness came about his path; aspirations seemed to have taken the place of memory; he was a youth again, and Harry's face, as he looked at him, was loving and reverent.
It was already deep dusk when they turned back, and only the faint reflections of the fires of sunset lingered in the sky. The green of grass and tree had faded to a sombre gray, and the green of the fantastically cut box hedge had deepened to black when they again passed under its misshapen shapes and monstrous prodigies. Somehow the look of it, cut out against the unspeakable softness and distance of the sky, struck Harry with something of an ominous touch.
"That must be seen to," he said, pointing to it. "Look at the horror of its shapes; it is like a collection of feverish dreams!"
"The old box hedge?" asked Mr. Francis. "If I were you I should not have it touched. See how Nature is striving to obliterate the intruding hand of man. How grotesque and quaint it appears in this light! How delightfully horrible!"
"Horrible, certainly," said Harry, "but I do not find delight there. Come, Uncle Francis, let us go in. It is already close upon dinner time, and one has to dress."