Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
people. My Uncle being a burgess of Rye, he counted all such you’ll bury your heart with your best friend by that road-
things odious, and my Aunt she couldn’t be got to practise side, and the road you open none shall shut so long as you’re
her gifts hardly at all, because it hurted her head for a week
after-wards; but when Frankie heard she had ‘em, he was all
let lie quiet in your grave.”
for nothin’ till she foretold on him—till she looked in his [The old lady’s prophecy is in a fair way to come true, for
hand to tell his fortune, d’ye see? One time we was at Rye she now the Panama Canal is finished, one end of it opens into
come aboard with my other shirt and some apples, and he the very bay where Sir Francis Drake was buried. So ships are
fair beazled the life out of her about it.
taken through the Canal, and the road round Cape Horn
‘“Oh, you’ll be twice wed, and die childless,” she says, and
pushes his hand away.
which Sir Francis opened is very little used.]
‘“That’s the woman’s part,” he says. “What’ll come to me- ‘“And if I’m not?” he says.
to me?” an’ he thrusts it back under her nose.
‘“Why, then,” she says, “Sim’s iron ships will be sailing on dry
‘“Gold—gold, past belief or counting,” she says. “Let go o’ land. Now ha’ done with this foolishness. Where’s Sim’s shirt?”
me, lad.”
‘He couldn’t fetch no more out of her, and when we come
‘“Sink the gold!” he says. “What’ll I do, mother?” He coaxed up from the cabin, he stood mazed-like by the tiller, playing
her like no woman could well withstand. I’ve seen him with with a apple. ‘“My Sorrow!” says my Aunt; “d’ye see that? The
‘em—even when they were sea-sick.
great world lying in his hand, liddle and round like a apple.”
‘“If you will have it,” she says at last, you shall have it. You’ll ‘“Why, ’tis one you gived him,” I says.
do a many things, and eating and drinking with a dead man ‘“To be sure,” she says. “’Tis just a apple,” and she went
beyond the world’s end will be the least of them. For you’ll ashore with her hand to her head. It always hurted her to
open a road from the East unto the West, and back again, and show her gifts.
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