“Well, then, you ought to be, Jasper. Have you an inch of ground of your own? Are you of the least use? Are you not spoken ill of by everybody? What’s a gypsy?”
“What’s the bird noising yonder, brother?”
“The bird! oh, that’s the cuckoo tolling; but what has the cuckoo to do with the matter?”
“What is it? you know as much about it as myself, Jasper.”
“Isn’t it a kind of roguish, chaffing bird, brother?”
“Very poor, brother, not a nest of its own?”
“Yes, Jasper; every person is mocking it.”
“You would be glad to get rid of the cuckoos, brother?”
“Why, not exactly, Jasper; the cuckoo is a pleasant, funny bird, and its presence and voice give a great charm to the green trees and fields; no, I can’t say I wish exactly to get rid of the cuckoo.”
“You must answer that question yourself, Jasper.”
“A roguish, chaffing fellow; a’n’t he, brother?”
“Something very much like a cuckoo, brother?”
“You would like to get rid of us, wouldn’t you?”
“We are no ornament to the green lanes in spring and summer time; are we, brother? and the voices of our chies, with their cukkerin and dukkerin, don’t help to make them pleasant?”
“You would wish to turn the cuckoos into barn-door fowls, wouldn’t you?”
“Can’t say I should, Jasper, whatever some people might wish.”
“And the chals and chies into radical weavers and factory wenches; hey, brother?”
“Can’t say that I should, Jasper. You are certainly a picturesque people, and in many respects an ornament both to town and country; painting and lil writing too are under great obligations to you. What pretty pictures are made out of your campings and groupings, and what pretty books have been written in which gypsies, or at least creatures intended to represent gypsies, have been the principal figures. I think if we were without you, we should begin to miss you.”
“Just as you would the cuckoos, if they were all converted into barn-door fowls. I tell you what, brother; frequently, as I have sat under a hedge in spring or summer time, and heard the cuckoo, I have thought that we chals and cuckoos are alike in many respects, but especially in character. Everybody speaks ill of us both, and everybody is glad to see both of us again.”
“Yes, Jasper, but there is some difference between men and cuckoos; men have souls, Jasper!”