hungry they will come back for more. For six nights I told those boys
gipsy stories. I took them out into the woods. We went out amongst the
rabbits. I told the boys the rabbits got very fond of me—so fond that they
used to go home with me! I took them through the clover-fields on a June
day and made them smell the perfume. I took them among the buttercups. I
told them it was the Finger of Love and the Smile of Infinite Wisdom that
put the spots upon the pansy and the deep blue in the violet. And then we
went out among the birds and we saw God taking songs from the lips of a
seraph and wrapping them round with feathers.

And the boys saw Jesus in every buttercup and every primrose, and every
little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the
angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was
there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him. I took them amongst the gipsy
tents, amongst the woodlands and dells of the old camping-grounds. They
walked with Him and they talked with Him. I didn’t use the usual Church
language, but I used the language of God in Nature and the boys heard Him.

Towards the end of the week one of those Munster boys came and touched me
and said, “Your Riverence! Your Riverence!” he says. “You’re a gentleman.”

I _knew_ I had got that boy.

Now, if you are an old angler you know what happens if you begin to tug at
the line the first time you get a bite. When you hook a fish, if he
happens to be a Munster, you have got to keep your head and play him, let
him have the line, let him go, keep steady, no excitement, give him play.
I gave him a bit of line, that young Munster. I thanked him for his
compliment and then walked away—with my eyes over my shoulder, for if he
hadn’t come after me I should have been after him.