Rewards and Fairies Part 15

When she had finished rubbing the place, Mrs. Vincey called to her that _Pansy_ had been fractious, or she would have come long before to help her strain and pour off.

'It didn't matter,' said Una; 'I just waited. Is that old _Pansy_ barging about the lower pasture now?'

'No,' said Mrs. Vincey, listening. 'It sounds more like a horse being galloped middlin' quick through the woods; but there's no road there. I reckon it's one of Gleason's colts loose. Shall I see you up to the house, Miss Una?'

'Gracious no! thank you. What's going to hurt me?' said Una, and she put her stool away behind the oak, and strolled home through the gaps that old Hobden kept open for her.

BROOKLAND ROAD

I was very well pleased with what I knowed, I reckoned myself no fool-- Till I met with a maid on the Brookland Road, That turned me back to school.

_Low down--low down!

Where the liddle green lanterns s.h.i.+ne-- Oh! maids, I've done with 'ee all but one, And she can never be mine!_

'Twas right in the middest of a hot June night, With thunder duntin' round, And I see'd her face by the fairy light That beats from off the ground.

She only smiled and she never spoke, She smiled and went away; But when she'd gone my heart was broke, And my wits was clean astray.

Oh! Stop your ringing and let me be-- Let be, Oh Brookland bells!

You'll ring Old Goodman[4] out of the sea, Before I wed one else!

Old Goodman's farm is rank sea sand, And was this thousand year; But it shall turn to rich plough land Before I change my dear!

Oh! Fairfield Church is water-bound From Autumn to the Spring; But it shall turn to high hill ground Before my bells do ring!

Oh! leave me walk on the Brookland Road, In the thunder and warm rain-- Oh! leave me look where my love goed And p'raps I'll see her again!

_Low down--low down!

Where the liddle green lanterns s.h.i.+ne-- Oh! maids, I've done with 'ee all but one, And she can never be mine._

[4] Earl G.o.dwin of the Goodwin Sands (?).

The Knife and the Naked Chalk

THE RUN OF THE DOWNS

_The Weald is good, the Downs are best-- I'll give you the run of 'em, East to West._ Beachy Head and Winddoor Hill, They were once and they are still.

Firle, Mount Caburn and Mount Harry Go back as far as sums'll carry.

Ditchling Beacon and Chanctonbury Ring, They have looked on many a thing; And what those two have missed between 'em I reckon Truleigh Hill has seen 'em.

Highden, Bignor and Duncton Down Knew Old England before the Crown.

Linch Down, Treyford and Sunwood Knew Old England before the Flood.

And when you end on the Hamps.h.i.+re side-- Butser's old as Time and Tide.

_The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn, You be glad you are Suss.e.x born!_

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 Suss.e.x, 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 door-step and took them in charge. The sun was hot, the dry gra.s.s was very slippery, and the distances were very distant.

'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 beef bone.

'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 above them. A gull flapped lazily along the white edge of the cliffs. The curves of the Downs shook a little in the heat, and so did Mr. Dudeney's distant head.

They walked toward it very slowly and found themselves staring into a horse-shoe-shaped hollow a hundred feet deep, whose steep sides were laced with tangled sheep-tracks. The flock grazed on the flat at the bottom, under charge of Young Jim. Mr. Dudeney sat comfortably knitting on the edge of the slope, his crook between his knees. They told him what Old Jim had done.

'Ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. The closeter you be to the turf the more you see things. You look warm-like,' said Mr. Dudeney.

'We be,' said Una, flopping down. '_And_ tired.'

'Set beside o' me here. The shadow'll begin to stretch out in a little while, and a heat-shake o' wind will come up with it that'll overlay your eyes like so much wool.'

'We don't want to sleep,' said Una indignantly; but she settled herself as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade.

'O' course not. You come to talk with me same as your father used. _He_ didn't need no dog to guide him to Norton Pit.'

'Well, he belonged here,' said Dan, and laid himself down at length on the turf.

'He did. And what beats me is why he went off to live among them messy trees in the Weald, when he might ha' stayed here and looked all about him. There's no profit to trees. They draw the lightning, and sheep shelter under 'em, and _so_, like as not, you'll lose a half score ewes struck dead in one storm. Tck! Your father knew that.'