Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
was. The horses are in Davy jones’s locker. If you ask any ‘Then why did he keep her in Davy Jones’s locker?’ Dan
questions you shall hear from me.”
asked. ‘That was his joke. He kept her under David Jones’s
‘I left ‘em singing hymns and I went down to old Conrad hat shop in the “Buck” tavern yard, and his Indian friends
Gerhard. He wasn’t at all surprised when I told him I was kept their ponies there when they visited him. I looked after
young Gert Schwankfelder that was. He knew Toby. His wife the horses when I wasn’t rolling pills on top of the old spinet,
she walked me into the back-yard without a word, and she while he played his fiddle and Red Jacket sang hymns. I liked
washed me and she cut my hair to the edge of a basin, and she it. I had good victuals, light work, a suit o’ clean clothes, a
put me to bed, and oh! how I slept—how I slept in that little plenty music, and quiet, smiling German folk all around that
room behind the oven looking on the flower garden! I didn’t let me sit in their gardens. My first Sunday, Toby took me to
know Toby went to the Embuscade that night and bought his church in Moravian Alley; and that was in a garden too.
me off Dr Karaguen for twelve dollars and a dozen bottles of The women wore long-eared caps and handkerchiefs. They
Seneca Oil. Karaguen wanted a new lace to his coat, and he came in at one door and the men at another, and there was a
reckoned I hadn’t long to live; so he put me down as “dis- brass chandelier you could see your face in, and a nigger-boy
charged sick.”
to blow the organ bellows. I carried Toby’s fiddle, and he
‘I like Toby,’ said Una.
played pretty much as he chose all against the organ and the
‘Who was he?’ said Puck.
singing. He was the only one they let do it, for they was a
‘Apothecary Tobias Hirte,’ Pharaoh replied. ‘One Hundred simple-minded folk. They used to wash each other’s feet up
and Eighteen, Second Street—the famous Seneca Oil man, in the attic to keep ‘emselves humble: which Lord knows
that lived half of every year among the Indians. But let me they didn’t need.’
tell my tale my own way, same as his brown mare used to go ‘How very queer!’ said Una.
to Lebanon.’
Pharaoh’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’ve met many and seen much,’
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