Page:Rewards and Fairies (Kipling, 1910).djvu/36

14 Robin!" all round Robin Hood’s barn, as we say, till he’d found me.’

‘The dear!’ said Una. ‘I’d like to have seen him!’

‘Yes, he was a boy. And when it came to learning his words — spells and such like — he’d sit on the Hill in the long shadows, worrying out bits of charms to try on passers-by. And when the bird flew to him, or the tree bowed to him for pure love’s sake (like everything else on my Hill), he’d shout, "Robin! Look — see! Look, see, Robin!" and sputter out some spell or other that they had taught him, all wrong end first, till I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was his own dear self and not the words that worked the wonder. When he got more abreast of his Words, and could cast spells for sure, as we say, he took more and more notice of things and people in the world. People of course, always drew him, for he was mortal all through.

‘Seeing that he was free to move among folk in housen, under or over Cold Iron, I used to take him along with me night-walking, where he could watch folk, and I could keep him from touching Cold Iron. That wasn’t so difficult as it sounds, because there are plenty of things besides Cold Iron in housen to catch a boy’s fancy. He was a handful, though! I shan’t forget when I took him to Little Lindens — his first night under a roof. The smell of the rushlights and the bacon on the beams — they were stuffing a feather-bed too, and it was a drizzling warm night — got into his head. Before I could stop him — we were