Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
man of Masons on Magdalen Tower, because, please you, I ‘They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a
dared to carve stone without their leave. They said a stone plasterer in Eighteen hundred Sixty-one—down to the wells.
had slipped from the cornice by accident.’
He was a Frenchy—a bad enemy he was.’ ‘I had mine too.
‘I know them accidents. There’s no way to disprove ‘em. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at Oxford
An’ stones ain’t the only things that slip,’ Mr Springett grunted. on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade—or trades,
Hal went on:
I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to
‘I’ve seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever be my singular good friend,’ said Hal as he put down the
workman thirty foot on to the cold chancel floor below. And mallet and settled himself comfortably.
a rope can break—’ ‘Yes, natural as nature; an’ lime’ll fly up in ‘What might his trade have been—plastering’ Mr Springett
a man’s eyes without any breath o’ wind sometimes,’ said Mr asked.
Springett. ‘But who’s to show ’twasn’t a accident?’
‘Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco—fresco we call
‘Who do these things?’ Dan asked, and straightened his back it. Made pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep
at the bench as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice of the hand in drawing. He’d take the long sides of a cloister,
to get at her counter.
trowel on his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures
‘Them which don’t wish other men to work no better nor of saints and croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unroll-
quicker than they do,’ growled Mr Springett. ‘Don’t pinch ing cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could draw, but ‘a was a
her so hard in the vice, Mus’ Dan. Put a piece o’ rag in the little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of colour
jaws, or you’ll bruise her. More than that’—he turned to- or plaster—common tricks, all of ‘em—and his one single
wards Hal—’if a man has his private spite laid up against you, talk was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t’other
the Unions give him his excuse for workin’ it off.’
secret art from him.’
‘Well I know it,’said Hal.
‘I know that sort,’ said Mr Springett. ‘There’s no keeping
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