Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
to himself, after some words gives the elder the lie. Hence, as peace with Spain. Where did you break your Queen’s peace?”
she guessed, the duel.’
‘“On the sea called the Spanish Main, though ’tis no more
‘And which had she really looked at?’ Dan asked.
Spanish than my doublet,” says the elder. Guess how that
‘Neither—except to wish them farther off. She was afraid warmed Gloriana’s already melting heart! She would never
all the while they’d spill dishes on her gown. She tells ‘em suffer any sea to be called Spanish in her private hearing.
this, poor chicks—and it completes their abasement. When ‘“And why was I not told? What booty got you, and where
they had grilled long enough, she says: “And so you would have you hid it? Disclose,” says she. “You stand in some dan-
have fleshed your maiden swords for me—for me?” Faith, ger of the gallows for pirates.”
they would have been at it again if she’d egged ‘em on! but ‘“The axe, most gracious lady,” says the elder, “for we are
their swords—oh, prettily they said it!—had been drawn for gentle born.” He spoke truth, but no woman can brook con-
her once or twice already.
tradiction. “Hoity-toity!” says she, and, but that she remem-
‘“And where?” says she. “On your hobby-horses before you bered that she was Queen, she’d have cuffed the pair of ‘em.
were breeched?”
“It shall be gallows, hurdle, and dung-cart if I choose.”
‘“On my own ship,” says the elder. “My cousin was vice- ‘“Had our Queen known of our going beforehand, Philip
admiral of our venture in his pinnace. We would not have might have held her to blame for some small things we did
you think of us as brawling children.”
on the seas,” the younger lisps.
‘“No, no,” says the younger, and flames like a very Tudor ‘“As for treasure,” says the elder, “we brought back but our
rose. “At least the Spaniards know us better.”
bare lives. We were wrecked on the Gascons’ Graveyard, where
‘“Admiral Boy—Vice-Admiral Babe,” says Gloriana, “I cry our sole company for three months was the bleached bones
your pardon. The heat of these present times ripens child- of De Avila’s men.”
hood to age more quickly than I can follow. But we are at ‘Gloriana’s mind jumped back to Philip’s last letter.
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