Fairies -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Short stories, English; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction
The lady bowed her head a little towards Dan. ‘You name her lightly
enough, young Burleigh. What might you know of her?’ said she.
‘Well, I--I’ve seen the little green shoes she left at Brickwall
House--down the road, you know. They’re in a glass case--awfully tiny
things.’
‘Oh, Burleigh, Burleigh!’ she laughed. ‘You are a courtier too soon.’
‘But they are,’ Dan insisted. ‘As little as dolls’ shoes. Did you really
know her well?’
‘Well. She was a--woman. I’ve been at her Court all my life. Yes, I
remember when she danced after the banquet at Brickwall. They say she
danced Philip of Spain out of a brand-new kingdom that day. Worth the
price of a pair of old shoes--hey?’
She thrust out one foot, and stooped forward to look at its broad
flashing buckle.
‘You’ve heard of Philip of Spain--long-suffering Philip,’ she said, her
eyes still on the shining stones. ‘Faith, what some men will endure at
some women’s hands passes belief! If I had been a man, and a woman had
played with me as Elizabeth played with Philip, I would have--’ She
nipped off one of the Virginia stocks and held it up between finger
and thumb. ‘But for all that’--she began to strip the leaves one by
one--‘they say--and I am persuaded--that Philip loved her.’ She tossed
her head sideways.
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Una.
‘The high heavens forbid that you should, wench!’ She swept the flowers
from her lap and stood up in the rush of shadows that the wind chased
through the wood.
‘I should like to know about the shoes,’ said Dan.
‘So ye shall, Burleigh. So ye shall, if ye watch me. ‘Twill be as good
as a play.’
‘We’ve never been to a play,’ said Una.
The lady looked at her and laughed. ‘I’ll make one for you. Watch! You
are to imagine that she--Gloriana, Belphoebe, Elizabeth--has gone on a
progress to Rye to comfort her sad heart (maids are often melancholic),
and while she halts at Brickwall House, the village--what was its name?’
She pushed Puck with her foot.
‘Norgem,’ he croaked, and squatted by the wigwam.
‘Norgem village loyally entertains her with a masque or play, and a
Latin oration spoken by the parson, for whose false quantities, if I’d
made ‘em in my girlhood, I should have been whipped.’
‘You whipped?’ said Dan.
‘Soundly, sirrah, soundly! She stomachs the affront to her scholarship,
makes her grateful, gracious thanks from the teeth outwards, thus’--(the
lady yawned)--‘Oh, a Queen may love her subjects in her heart, and yet
be dog-wearied of ‘em ‘in body and mind--and so sits down’--her skirts
foamed about her as she sat--‘to a banquet beneath Brickwall Oak. Here
for her sins she is waited upon by--What were the young cockerels’ names
that served Gloriana at table?’
‘Frewens, Courthopes, Fullers, Husseys,’ Puck began.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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