"George, you are an ass," was his very rude reply, and it seemed to ring into me far beyond his meaning. "My dear fellow, you will be, in your own parish, what nobody has seen anywhere,—a dead jackass,—if you go on like this. There is a black stripe down your arm; the same as you see on a 'mild-cured-haddy' when he shines by moonlight. What does that mean? Putrefaction."
"Rot!" I replied, meaning his own words. "I'll pump on you, waistcoat and all, my dear Tom, if you go on with this sort of rubbish." And yet I had some idea that he might be right. But the worst—as I need not tell any strong young fellow—of the absurdities our worthy doctors try to screw into us now—that a man must not draw the breath the Lord breathed into him, for fear of myrio-mycelia-micro-somethings, neither dare to put his fork into the grand haunch of mutton which his Maker ordered him to arise and eat—of all such infantile stuff the harm is this, that it makes a healthy man deride the better sense that is in them.
"Come to my hole, and have a smoke," I said to my dear friend. "And mind you, not a word about this scratch to my good people. To-morrow we shall cut our first field of wheat. Though it won't pay for cutting and binding, Tom, the sight is as glorious as ever. What a pity for our descendants, if we ever have any, to get no chance of ever seeing the noblest sight of Old England! Come to this gate, and take a look. In a few more years, there will be no such sight."
"Poetry is all very fine in its way," replied Tom, who had about as much as I possess, although he could make a hook and eye of rhyme sometimes. "But the moon will go on all the same, I suppose; and she does most of our poetry."
She was doing plenty of it now, in silence, such as any man may feel, but none can make another feel. We waited a minute or two by the gate, till a white cloud veiled the quivering disc, and then all the lustre flowed softly to our eyes, like a sea of silver playing smoothly on a shore of gold.
"After all, love is rot," said Tom, carried away by larger beauty, after some snub of the day before. "I should like to see any girl who could compare with that. And a man must be a muff who could look at this, and then trouble his head about their stupid little tricks. Look at the breadth of this, look at the depth of it! Why, it lifts one; it makes one feel larger, George; that is the way to take things."
"Especially when some one has been making you feel small," I answered at a venture, for I understood my friend; and this abstract worship of beauty was not so satisfactory to me now. "But come into my place, and tell me all about it, my dear Tom. You were so mysterious the other day, that I knew you were after some other wild goose."
"I am happy, most happy," Tom went on to say, after pouring forth the sorrows of his last love-tale, through many a blue eye and bright curl of smoke; "I feel that I cannot be thankful enough at the amount of side that girl puts on. And the beauty of it is, that she hasn't got a rap, and her husband would have to help to keep her mother. How lucky for me she never can have heard of the glorious Tinman, or my oofy maiden-aunt; wouldn't she have jumped at me, if she had? A fellow can't be too careful, George, when you come to think. But you'll never make a fool of yourself. Not a bit of romance about you, Farmer Jarge; and a fellow of your size and family has a right to go in for ten thousand a-year. How about those gipsies in the valley, though? You mustn't go on with that, even if you could, my friend. Great swells, I daresay, but no tin."
"What business of yours? What do you know about them? I'll thank you to hold your tongue upon subjects that are above you."
"Ha, ha! Ho, ho! Tinmen must look up to tinkers, must they? How dare I call them tinkers? Well, it is just like this. These people are gipsies, all gipsies are tinkers, therefore these people are tinkers. But don't get in a wax, George. I was only chaffing. It may be Cleopatra herself, for all I know, come to look after her needle—would not look at it, while her own, will look at nothing else, when lost. Oh, I know what women are."