Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
called “child.” Please tell me about store-rooms and giving over something that really matters, and they say, “Don’t worry”;
out things.’
as if that did any good!’
Ah, it’s a great responsibility—particularly with that old cat ‘I quite agree with you, my dear; quite agree with you! I
Amoore looking at the lists over your shoulder. And such a told Ciss the spoons were solid silver, and worth forty shil-
shocking thing happened last summer! Poor crazy Cissie, my lings, so if the thief were found, he’d be tried for his life.’
Nurse that I was telling you of, she took three solid silver ‘Hanged, do you mean?’Una said.
tablespoons.’
‘They ought to be; but Dad says no jury will hang a man
‘Took! But isn’t that stealing?’ Una cried.
nowadays for a forty-shilling theft. They transport ‘em into
‘Hsh!’ said Philadelphia, looking round at Puck. ‘All I say is penal servitude at the uttermost ends of the earth beyond the
she took them without my leave. I made it right afterwards. seas, for the term of their natural life. I told Cissie that, and I
So, as Dad says—and he’s a magistrate—, it wasn’t a legal saw her tremble in my mirror. Then she cried, and caught
offence; it was only compounding a felony.
hold of my knees, and I couldn’t for my life understand what
‘It sounds awful,’ said Una.
it was all about,—she cried so. Can you guess, my dear, what
‘It was. My dear, I was furious! I had had the keys for ten that poor crazy thing had done? It was midnight before I pieced
months, and I’d never lost anything before. I said nothing at it together. She had given the spoons to Jerry Gamm, the
first, because a big house offers so many chances of things Witchmaster on the Green, so that he might put a charm on
being mislaid, and coming to hand later. “Fetching up in the me! Me!’
lee-scuppers,” my uncle calls it. But next week I spoke to old ‘Put a charm on you? Why?’
Cissie about it when she was doing my hair at night, and she ‘That’s what I asked; and then I saw how mad poor Cissie
said I wasn’t to worry my heart for trifles!’
was! You know this stupid little cough of mine? It will disap-
‘Isn’t it like ‘em?’ Una burst out. ‘They see you’re worried pear as soon as I go to London. She was troubled about that,
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