Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
he looked so comical squatting among the hives that—I know ‘“Ah! I reckon she’ve been talking to you, then,” he said.
I oughtn’t to—I laughed, and he laughed. I always laugh at “Yes, she give me no peace, and bein’ tarrified—for I don’t
the wrong time. But I soon recovered my dignity, and I said, hold with old women—I laid a task on her which I thought
“Then give me back what you made poor Cissie steal!” ‘ud silence her. I never reckoned the old scrattle ‘ud risk her
‘“Your pore Cissie,” he said. “She’s a hatful o’ trouble. But neckbone at Lewes Assizes for your sake, Miss Phil. But she
you shall have ‘em, Miss Phil. They’re all ready put by for did. She up an’ stole, I tell ye, as cheerful as a tinker. You
you.” And, would you believe it, the old sinner pulled my might ha’ knocked me down with any one of them liddle
three silver spoons out of his dirty pocket, and polished them spoons when she brung ‘em in her apron.”
on his cuff. “Here they be,” he says, and he gave them to me, ‘“Do you mean to say, then, that you did it to try my poor
just as cool as though I’d come to have my warts charmed. Cissie?” I screamed at him.
That’s the worst of people having known you when you were ‘“What else for, dearie?” he said. “I don’t stand in need of
young. But I preserved my composure. “Jerry,” I said, “what hedge-stealings. I’m a freeholder, with money in the bank; and
in the world are we to do? If you’d been caught with these now I won’t trust women no more! Silly old besom! I do beleft
things on you, you’d have been hanged.”
she’d ha’ stole the Squire’s big fob-watch, if I’d required her.”
‘“I know it,” he said. “But they’re yours now.”
‘“Then you’re a wicked, wicked old man,” I said, and I was
‘“But you made my Cissie steal them,” I said.
so angry that I couldn’t help crying, and of course that made
‘“That I didn’t,” he said. “Your Cissie, she was pickin’ at me an’ me cough.
tarrifyin’ me all the long day an’ every day for weeks, to put a ‘Jerry was in a fearful taking. He picked me up and carried
charm on you, Miss Phil, an’ take away your little spitty cough.” me into his cottage—it’s full of foreign curiosities—and he
‘“Yes. I knew that, Jerry, and to make me flesh-up!” I said. got me something to eat and drink, and he said he’d be hanged
“I’m much obliged to you, but I’m not one of your pigs!” by the neck any day if it pleased me. He said he’d even tell old
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