Only when the poet called for him and at the window I laid a hand upon his shoulder to bid him a happy day, he turned to me, impulsively:
"You are a ripper," he said.
There is no sweeter or more genuine praise than a boy's.
I watched them down the lane, and my eyes sought the downs, clear, and wide, and sunny. I thought of the tawdry inn, and its associations, and prayed that Tommy might learn a lesson from the contrast.
Says Jasper the gipsy:
"Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"
Hark back to your well-thumbed Lavengro and you will find, if you do not remember, his reasons.
Nor are they weightier than these:
"Night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath."
Deep in the heart of every boy lies something of the gipsy, and even if, in after life, it grows sick and stifled by reason of much traffic among crowded streets, yet I doubt if it ever so far vanishes that to it the wind on the heath shall appeal in vain. Nor was the poet wrong in his prognosis, for to Tommy, at any rate, it was full of unspoken messages on this August morning. Wind on the heath—yes, it is always there, clean, and strong, and happy, lingering with soft wings over furze and bracken, full of whispered melodies from the harp of God.