mine always does at the coming of a brother;
and we became brothers in that lane." Jasper laughs at the Sapengro and
Lavengro and horse-witch because he lacks two things, "mother sense and
gentle Rommany," and he has something to do with teaching Borrow the
Gypsy tongue and Gypsy ways, and the "mother sense" of shifting for
himself. The Gypsies approve him also as "a pure fist master." In
return he teaches Mrs. Chikno's child to say his prayers in Rommany. They
were willing--all but Mrs. Herne--that he should marry Mr. Petulengro's
sister, Ursula. It is always by chance that they meet, and chance is
very favourable. They meet at significant times, as when Borrow has been
troubled by the preacher and the state of his own soul, or when he is
sick of London and hack-writing and poverty. In fact, the Gypsies, and
his "brother" Jasper in particular, returning and returning, are the
motive of the book. They connect Borrow with what is strange, with what
is simple, and with what is free. The very last words of "The Romany
Rye," spoken as he is walking eastward, are "I shouldn't wonder if Mr.
Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go
there." They are not a device. The re-appearances of these wandering
men are for the most part only pleasantly unexpected. Their mystery is
the mystery of nature and life. They keep their language and their tents
against the mass of civilization and length of time. They are foreigners
but as native as the birds. It is Borrow's triumph to make them as
romantic as their reputation while yet satisfying Gypsy students as to
his facts.

Jasper is almost like a second self, a kind of more simple, atavistic
self, to Borrow, as in that characteristic picture, where he is drawing
near to Wales with his friends, the Welsh preacher and his wife. A brook
is the border and they point it out. There is a horseman entering it:
"he stops in the middle of it as if to water his steed." They ask
Lavengro if he will come with them into Wales. They persuade him:

"'I will not go with you,' said I. 'Dost thou see that man in the ford?'

"'Who is staring at us so, and whose horse has not yet done drinking? Of
course I see him.'

"'I shall turn back with him. God bless you!'

"'Go back with him not,' said Peter, 'he is one of those whom I like not,
one of the clibberty-clabber, as Master Ellis Wyn observes--turn not with
that man.'

"'Go not back with him,' said Wi