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Page 3
'I did,' said Una. 'At least, I sort of half believed till we learned
"Farewell Rewards". Do you know "Farewell Rewards and Fairies"?'
'Do you mean this?' said Puck. He threw his big head back and began at
the second line:
'Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less
('Join in, Una!')
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?'
The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.
'Of course I know it,' he said.
'And then there's the verse about the rings,' said Dan. 'When I was
little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.'
'"Witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?' boomed Puck, with a
voice like a great church organ.
'Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain,
But since of late Elizabeth,
And, later, James came in,
Are never seen on any heath
As when the time hath been.'
'It's some time since I heard that sung, but there's no good beating
about the bush: it's true. The People of the Hills have all left. I saw
them come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies,
brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits;
heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little
people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes,
and the rest--gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash and
Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.'
Dan looked round the meadow--at Una's Oak by the lower gate; at the line
of ash trees that overhang Otter Pool where the mill-stream spills over
when the Mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where
Three Cows scratched their necks.
'It's all right,' he said; and added, 'I'm planting a lot of acorns this
autumn too.'
'Then aren't you most awfully old?' said Una.
'Not old--fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. Let me see--my
friends used to set my dish of cream for me o' nights when Stonehenge
was new. Yes, before the Flint Men made the Dewpond under Chanctonbury
Ring.'
Una clasped her hands, cried 'Oh!' and nodded her head.
'She's thought a plan,' Dan explained. 'She always does like that when
she thinks a plan.'
'I was thinking--suppose we saved some of our porridge and put it in the
attic for you? They'd notice if we left it in the nursery.'
'Schoolroom,' said Dan quickly, and Una flushed, because they had made a
solemn treaty that summer not to call the schoolroom the nursery any
more.
'Bless your heart o' gold!' said Puck. 'You'll make a fine considering
wench some market-day. I really don't want you to put out a bowl for me;
but if ever I need a bite, be sure I'll tell you.'
He stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the children
stretched out beside him, their bare legs waving happily in the air.
They felt they could not be afraid of him any more than of their
particular friend old Hobden the hedger. He did not bother them with
grown-up questions, or laugh at the donkey's head, but lay and smiled to
himself in the most sensible way.
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