Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
‘I say so,’ he went on, ‘because to a certain extent I have ‘“My dear man,” I said, “admitting that that is the case,
been made a victim of that habit of mind. Some while after I surely you, as an educated person, don’t believe in Wotan and
was settled at Selsey, King Ethelwalch and Queen Ebba or- all the other hobgoblins any more than Padda here?” The old
dered their people to be baptized. I fear I’m too old to believe seal was hunched up on his ox-hide behind his master’s chair.
that a whole nation can change its heart at the King’s com- ‘“Even if I don’t,” he said, “why should I insult the memory
mand, and I had a shrewd suspicion that their real motive was of my fathers’ Gods? I have sent you a hundred and three of
to get a good harvest. No rain had fallen for two or three my rascals to christen. Isn’t that enough?”
years, but as soon as we had finished baptizing, it fell heavily, ‘“By no means,” I answered. “I want you.”
and they all said it was a miracle.’
‘“He wants us! What do you think of that, Padda?” He
‘And was it?’ Dan asked.
pulled the seal’s whiskers till it threw back its head and roared,
‘Everything in life is a miracle, but’ —the Archbishop twisted and he pretended to interpret. “No! Padda says he won’t be
the heavy ring on his finger— ‘I should be slow— ve-ry slow baptized yet awhile. He says you’ll stay to dinner and come
should I be—to assume that a certain sort of miracle happens fishing with me tomorrow, because you’re over-worked and
whenever lazy and improvident people say they are going to need a rest.”
turn over a new leaf if they are paid for it. My friend Meon ‘“I wish you’d keep yon brute in its proper place,” I said,
had sent his slaves to the font, but he had not come himself, and Eddi, my chaplain, agreed.
so the next time I rode over—to return a manuscript—I took ‘“I do,” said Meon. “I keep him just next my heart. He
the liberty of asking why. He was perfectly open about it. He can’t tell a lie, and he doesn’t know how to love any one ex-
looked on the King’s action as a heathen attempt to curry cept me. It ‘ud be the same if I were dying on a mud-bank,
favour with the Christians’ God through me the Archbishop, wouldn’t it, Padda?”
and he would have none of it.
‘“Augh! Augh!” said Padda, and put up his head to be
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