On his birthday, as he was walking by the river, he saw kneeling in the
grass a pretty girl who did not belong to the village. She wore a silver
frock that glistened in the sun, but over it a check apron was tied; her
hair hung loose from a wreath of stars, and on top of this was a
sprigged sunbonnet. She had a little trowel in her hand, and was busy
weeding the buttercups that grew thick on the river-bank. Wherever she
pulled up a weed a gold ring was left in the ground, so that the wild
meadow was sprinkled with enough to marry all the maidens of Shortways
three times over. Tom looked at her for a bit and then said,
“Good-morning.”
“Good-morning,” said the pretty girl, driving in her trowel.
“What are you doing?” asked Tom.
“I’m weeding the world,” said the pretty girl.
“It’ll take some time,” said Tom; “wait a bit!” He looked in his brown
book, plucked a spire of purple loosestrife, waved it three times, and
every weed in the meadow immediately disappeared; but at the same time
the buttercups turned blue.
The pretty girl looked vexed. “There’s my job gone,” said she, “and just
see what a mess you’ve made of things. Blue buttercups indeed! It’s not
nature.”
“No,” said Tom, “it’s magic.”
[Illustration:
_Ooney weeding the world._
]
“I hate magic,” said the pretty girl. “It spoils a body’s jobs.”
“It saves a lot of time,” said Tom.
“What for?” said the pretty girl. “Time’s got to be spent somehow.” She
rose from her knees, looked at Tom, and said, “Why, to be sure, you’re
Tom Cobble!”
“And you are Ooney,” said Tom. “You’re still sixteen years old, I see,
though seven years have passed.”
“Minutes,” said Ooney. “Why, ’twasn’t ten minutes back since you walked
off with my Father’s book, but haven’t you grown in the time!”
“What have you come for, Ooney?” said Tom. “You can’t have the book.”
“_Bother_ the book!” said Ooney. “It always spoiled my fun. If you want
to know, Tom Cobble, I’m out of sorts with my own folk, and I’ve come to
get stolen by the humans. Believe me, Tom, you people aren’t one whit
more curious about Fairyland than we are about Shortways; so I’ll just
step up to the village and let somebody catch me.”
She nodded to him and tripped away, and Tom saw no more of her that day.
But next morning, happening to pass the Garland Inn, he saw Ooney wiping
mugs behind the bar, with Harry Blossom showing her how. “Ye’ll soon get
the hang of it,” said Harry Blossom, “but ’twould be better, my dear, if
ye could keep ’em from filling with rose-leaves and pearls after ye’ve
wiped ’em dry—it only makes work twice over.”
“I’ll try,” said Ooney, “but one can’t get rid of one’s upbringing all
in a moment. There’s Tom Cobble at the door. Come in, Tom, and have a
drink. I’m maid-of-allwork at the Inn here, now, for the Missus caught
me nicely with her clothes-line yesterday evening, and so I’m stolen
safe and sound and can’t go back to Fairyland for seven years. What will
you have?”
[Illustration: Black and white illustration depicting a person with a
satchel standing at a counter where a woman is opening a bottle, with a
dog seated in the foreground.]
“I’ll have a ginger-pop,” said Tom.
Ooney ran for a bottle, and undid the wires with great care, and the
cork popped up to the ceiling, and a sky-rocket popped after it and
dropped coloured rain all over the sanded floor.
“Try again,” said Tom.
So she fetched another bottle and tried again, and the cork popped as
before, but when Ooney went to pour out the drink there was another cork
in the bottle; and however often she drew it, there was always a cork to
take its place.
“Third time’s lucky,” said Tom, and Ooney hoped it would be. The third
cork came out quietly, and the ginger-pop foamed into the mug; and as
soon as the froth was settled Tom saw the whole of his past and future
life reflected in the clear drink. However, that didn’t trouble him, and
he drank it down and enjoyed it.
Ooney said, “That will be threepence, please;” and Tom, who never had
any money, picked up a pinch of sawdust from the floor, and changed it
into threepence and gave it her. Ooney shook her head and said, “Oh,
this magic! will you _never_ learn to do things in the ordinary
way?”—and put the pennies in the till, where they immediately began to
spin themselves, one fall down t’other come up, till closing time.
Ooney served her seven years at the Garland Inn, but the whole story of
it would take too long to tell you. During this time Sally Drake, who
was nearly eighty years old, and as spry as forty, continually plagued
Tom to stop messing about with things and get some sensible work to do,
and Tom always answered, “Wait a bit, there’s no hurry.” When, however,
Jack Drake took it into his head to marry a wife, and emigrate to
Surrey, Tom Cobble, happening to meet the Duke in the Park soon after,
offered himself as Head Keeper.
The Duke, who lived on the other side of the Park, five miles off from
Shortways, knew nothing of the queer things going on there, and did not
suspect that Tom was the cause of his horned rabbits, and his winged
deer, and his own golden boots, for which he had had to have a special
wing built by now in the Castle; so he gave Tom the post, “for,” said
the Duke, “I expect you know the ways of the Park by now.”
“I expect I do,” said Tom.
When he told the news to Sally Drake, she sniffed and tossed and said
nothing; she had her own opinions, and she kept them to herself. When
grapes began to grow on the beech-trees, and the primroses in the
ash-copse grew twenty feet tall, and the squirrels in the King’s Oak
began to chatter in Chinese, it was none of Sally Drake’s business if
the Duke didn’t know why. The village cronies over their cups told each
other from day to day what new wonder had happened in the Duke’s Park,
and Ooney behind the bar heard everything, and had no patience with it.
“There’s no sense in it at all,” said she, polishing the pint-pots. “Why
can’t the boy do his work like an ordinary mortal?” And she put the
pint-pots on the shelf, where they all turned into Toby Jugs.
Ooney, as you see, was very scornful of Tom Cobble, for he was trying to
do the very things in Shortways which she had run away from Fairyland to
escape. And Tom, for his part, thought Ooney a little silly to object to
all the things that made life different, and to prefer to cook the
dinner on a stove rather than leave it all to a magic tablecloth. So
during her seven years’ service as maid-of-all-work at the Garland Inn,
Ooney gave Tom the go-by, and he did the same to her. They had no use
whatever for each other’s ways.
Ooney was a good girl, and determined to make herself thoroughly useful;
there was nothing she wasn’t ready to turn a hand to, cooking or
cleaning, dusting or sweeping, brewing or baking, or feather-bed-making.
She helped in the garden, and looked after the chickens, and washed on
Monday and ironed on Tuesday. She filled the lamps, and fed the dog, and
served behind the bar; she was always sweet-tempered and never tired,
and the Missus said she would have been a Treasure, but——
The fact is that, for all her willingness and busy-ness, there was never
a job Ooney undertook that didn’t end up different from the way it set
out. If she put a cabbage into the pot, it came out porridge; when she
cleaned the step, the customers who trod on it stuck fast until they had
granted the Missus her first request; when she swept and dusted a room,
there was always a litter of silver pennies left behind her broom and
her brush; when she brewed the ale, it turned into golden syrup; when
she baked a pie, it was sure to contain at least one singing blackbird;
and when she made a feather-bed, it flew to Arabia with whoever next
slept on it.
When she dug for potatoes, she turned up chocolate creams.
When she gathered the new-laid eggs, before she could get them to the
house they changed into Easter Eggs with presents inside them.
When she washed the sheets they turned into table-napkins, and when she
ironed the napkins they turned into pocket-handkerchiefs.
When she filled the lamp, it gave out moonshine.
When she fed the dog, he got a dragon’s tail.
When she served the drink, you know what happened.
So at the end of the seven years the Missus said to her, “Ooney, you
must go.”
“Oh, Missus!” said Ooney, and her eyes filled with tears, “couldn’t you
keep me?”
“Your time’s up,” said the Missus, “and your place is wanted. You’re a
good girl, Ooney, but fairies’ ways aren’t Shortways’ ways, and what
between you and Tom Cobble we’re getting the talk of Sussex.”
“Me and Tom Cobble?” cried Ooney, very hurt. “Why, Missus, you’d never
make a pair of us two? Tom Cobble never tried to do a useful thing in
his life, and even his magic is left-handed, because my Father blew on
his eye before he went away. But oh, Missus, I do try so hard to do jobs
and be useful!”
“I know you do,” said the Missus, “but your jobs are as left-handed as
Tom Cobble’s magic, and for all I can see there’s nothing to choose
between you. No, Ooney, my dear, I can’t keep you any longer, and I’m
sorry I ever stole you. You may take with you, for a present, anything
you fancy that will go into your pocket.”
“Then I’ll take the Garland Inn, Missus,” said Ooney—and before you
could say Jack Robinson! the Garland Inn had dwindled to the size of a
money-box, with bar and kitchen and bedrooms all complete; and Ooney
popped it into her apron-pocket and went back to Fairyland.