Page:Rewards and Fairies (Kipling, 1910).djvu/40

18 it. I didn’t promise not to keep an eye on the Boy, though. I watched him close — close — close!

‘When he found what his people had forced me to do, he gave them a piece of his mind, but they all kissed and cried round him, and being only a boy, he came over to their way of thinking (I don’t blame him), and called himself unkind, and ungrateful; and it all ended in fresh shows and plays, and magics to distract him from folk in housen. Dear heart alive! How he used to call and call on me, and I couldn’t answer, or even let him know that I was near!’

‘Not even once?’ said Una. ‘If he was very lonely?’

‘No, he couldn’t,’ said Dan, who had been thinking. ‘Didn’t you swear by the Hammer of Thor that you wouldn’t, Puck?’

‘By that Hammer!’ was the deep rumbled reply. Then he came back to his soft speaking voice. ‘And the Boy was lonely, when he couldn’t see me any more. He began to try to learn all learning (he had good teachers), but I saw him lift his eyes from the big black books toward folk in housen all the time. He studied song-making (good teachers he had too!), but he sung those songs with his back toward the Hill, and his face toward folk. I know! I have sat and grieved over him grieving within a rabbit’s jump of him. Then he studied the High, Low and Middle Magic. He had promised the Lady Esclairmonde he would never go near folk in housen, so he had to make shows and shadows for his mind to chew on.’