Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
here. What’s the matter with you? Wouldn’t you like to be and there was my father and Sir Arthur Wesley on horseback
with your old woman tonight, Tom?”
in the lane; and there was Rene kneeling on Doctor Break,
‘But they didn’t even look back, much less come. They ran and there was I up in the oak, listening with all my ears.
to the village alehouse like hares.
‘I must have leaned forward too much, and the voice gave
‘“No matter for these canaille,” said Rene, buttoning up his me such a start that I slipped. I had only time to make one
coat so as not to show any linen. All gentlemen do that be- jump on to the pigsty roof—another, before the tiles broke,
fore a duel, Dad says—and he’s been out five times. “You on to the pigsty wall—and then I bounced down into the
shall be his second, Monsieur Gamm. Give him the pistol.” garden, just behind Jerry, with my hair full of bark. Imagine
‘Doctor Break took it as if it was red-hot, but he said that if the situation!’
Rene resigned his pretensions in certain quarters he would ‘Oh, I can!’ Una laughed till she nearly fell off the stool.
pass over the matter. Rene bowed deeper than ever.
‘Dad said, “Phil—a—del—phia!” and Sir Arthur Wesley
‘“As for that,” he said, “if you were not the ignorant which said, “Good Ged” and Jerry put his foot on the pistol Rene
you are, you would have known long ago that the subject of had dropped. But Rene was splendid. He never even looked
your remarks is not for any living man.”
at me. He began to untwist Doctor Break’s neckcloth as fast
‘I don’t know what the subject of his remarks might have as he’d twisted it, and asked him if he felt better.
been, but he spoke in a simply dreadful voice, my dear, and ‘“What’s happened? What’s happened?” said Dad.
Doctor Break turned quite white, and said Rene was a liar; and ‘“A fit!” said Rene. “I fear my confrere has had a fit. Do not
then Rene caught him by the throat, and choked him black. be alarmed. He recovers himself. Shall I bleed you a little, my
‘Well, my dear, as if this wasn’t deliciously exciting enough, dear Doctor?” Doctor Break was very good too. He said, “I
just exactly at that minute I heard a strange voice on the other am vastly obliged, Monsieur Laennec, but I am restored now.”
side of the hedge say, “What’s this? What’s this, Bucksteed?” And as he went out of the gate he told Dad it was a syn-
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