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Page 2
'What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of our fairy Queen?'
He stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and, with a wicked twinkle
in his eye, went on:
'What, a play toward? I'll be auditor;
An actor, too, perhaps, if I see cause.'
The children looked and gasped. The small thing--he was no taller than
Dan's shoulder--stepped quietly into the Ring.
'I'm rather out of practice,' said he; 'but that's the way my part ought
to be played.'
Still the children stared at him--from his dark-blue cap, like a big
columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. At last he laughed.
'Please don't look like that. It isn't my fault. What else could you
expect?' he said.
'We didn't expect any one,' Dan answered, slowly. 'This is our field.'
'Is it?' said their visitor, sitting down. 'Then what on Human Earth
made you act _Midsummer Night's Dream_ three times over, _on_ Midsummer
Eve, _in_ the middle of a Ring, and under--right _under_ one of my
oldest hills in Old England? Pook's Hill--Puck's Hill--Puck's
Hill--Pook's Hill! It's as plain as the nose on my face.'
He pointed to the bare, fern-covered slope of Pook's Hill that runs up
from the far side of the mill-stream to a dark wood. Beyond that wood
the ground rises and rises for five hundred feet, till at last you climb
out on the bare top of Beacon Hill, to look over the Pevensey Levels and
the Channel and half the naked South Downs.
'By Oak, Ash, and Thorn!' he cried, still laughing. 'If this had
happened a few hundred years ago you'd have had all the People of the
Hills out like bees in June!'
'We didn't know it was wrong,' said Dan.
'Wrong!' The little fellow shook with laughter. 'Indeed, it isn't wrong.
You've done something that Kings and Knights and Scholars in old days
would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. If Merlin
himself had helped you, you couldn't have managed better! You've broken
the Hills--you've broken the Hills! It hasn't happened in a thousand
years.'
'We--we didn't mean to,' said Una.
'Of course you didn't! That's just why you did it. Unluckily the Hills
are empty now, and all the People of the Hills are gone. I'm the only
one left. I'm Puck, the oldest Old Thing in England, very much at your
service if--if you care to have anything to do with me. If you don't, of
course you've only to say so, and I'll go.'
He looked at the children, and the children looked at him for quite half
a minute. His eyes did not twinkle any more. They were very kind, and
there was the beginning of a good smile on his lips.
Una put out her hand. 'Don't go,' she said. 'We like you.'
'Have a Bath Oliver,' said Dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope
with the eggs.
'By Oak, Ash and Thorn,' cried Puck, taking off his blue cap, 'I like
you too. Sprinkle a plenty salt on the biscuit, Dan, and I'll eat it
with you. That'll show you the sort of person I am. Some of us'--he went
on, with his mouth full--'couldn't abide Salt, or Horse-shoes over a
door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or Cold Iron, or the
sound of Church Bells. But I'm Puck!'
He brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and shook hands.
'We always said, Dan and I,' Una stammered, 'that if it ever happened
we'd know ex-actly what to do; but--but now it seems all different
somehow.'
'She means meeting a fairy,' said Dan. 'I never believed in 'em--not
after I was six, anyhow.'
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