Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

The Knife and the Naked Chalk
THE CHILDREN went to the seaside for a month, and lived in a
flint village on the bare windy chalk Downs, quite thirty miles
away from home. They made friends with an old shepherd,
called Mr Dudeney, who had known their Father when their
Father was little. He did not talk like their own people in the
Weald of Sussex, and he used different names for farm things,
but he understood how they felt, and let them go with him.
He had a tiny cottage about half a mile from the village, where
his wife made mead from thyme honey, and nursed sick lambs
in front of a coal fire, while Old Jim, who was Mr Dudeney’s
sheep-dog’s father, lay at the door. They brought up beef bones
for Old Jim (you must never give a sheep-dog mutton bones),
and if Mr Dudeney happened to be far in the Downs, Mrs
Dudeney would tell the dog to take them to him, and he did.
One August afternoon when the village water-cart had made
the street smell specially townified, they went to look for their
shepherd as usual, and, as usual, Old Jim crawled over the doorstep
and took them in charge. The sun was hot, the dry grass
was very slippery, and the distances were very distant.
Rudyard Kipling
73
‘It’s Just like the sea,’ said Una, when Old Jim halted in the
shade of a lonely flint barn on a bare rise. ‘You see where
you’re going, and - you go there, and there’s nothing between.’
Dan slipped off his shoes. ‘When we get home I shall sit in
the woods all day,’ he said.
‘Whuff!’ said Old Jim, to show he was ready, and struck
across a long rolling stretch of turf. Presently he asked for his
beefbone.
‘Not yet,’ said Dan. ‘Where’s Mr Dudeney? Where’s Master?’
Old Jim looked as if he thought they were mad, and
asked again.
‘Don’t you give it him,’ Una cried. ‘I’m not going to be left
howling in a desert.’
‘Show, boy! Show!’ said Dan, for the Downs seemed as
bare as the palm of your hand.
Old Jim sighed, and trotted forward. Soon they spied the
blob of Mr Dudeney’s hat against the sky a long way off.
‘Right! All right!’ said Dan. Old Jim wheeled round, took
his bone carefully between his blunted teeth, and returned to
the shadow of the old barn, looking just like a wolf. The
children went on. Two kestrels hung bivvering and squealing