‘By Oak, Ash, and Thorn!’ he cried, still laughing.  ’If this had happened a few hundred years ago you’d have had all the People of the Hills out like bees in June!’

‘We didn’t know it was wrong,’ said Dan.

‘Wrong!’ The little fellow shook with laughter.  ’Indeed, it isn’t wrong.  You’ve done something that Kings and Knights and Scholars in old days would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out.  If Merlin himself had helped you, you couldn’t have managed better!  You’ve broken the Hills—­you’ve broken the Hills!  It hasn’t happened in a thousand years.’

‘We—­we didn’t mean to,’ said Una.

’Of course you didn’t!  That’s just why you did it.  Unluckily the Hills are empty now, and all the People of the Hills are gone.  I’m the only one left.  I’m Puck, the oldest Old Thing in England, very much at your service if—­if you care to have anything to do with me.  If you don’t, of course you’ve only to say so, and I’ll go.’

He looked at the children, and the children looked at him for quite half a minute.  His eyes did not twinkle any more.  They were very kind, and there was the beginning of a good smile on his lips.

Una put out her hand.  ‘Don’t go,’ she said.  ‘We like you.’

‘Have a Bath Oliver,’ said Dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope with the eggs.

‘By Oak, Ash and Thorn,’ cried Puck, taking off his blue cap, ’I like you too.  Sprinkle a plenty salt on the biscuit, Dan, and I’ll eat it with you.  That’ll show you the sort of person I am.  Some of us’—­he went on, with his mouth full—­’couldn’t abide Salt, or Horse-shoes over a door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or Cold Iron, or the sound of Church Bells.  But I’m Puck!’

He brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and shook hands.

‘We always said, Dan and I,’ Una stammered, ’that if it ever happened we’d know ex-actly what to do; but—­but now it seems all different somehow.’

‘She means meeting a fairy,’ said Dan.  ’I never believed in ’em—­not after I was six, anyhow.’

‘I did,’ said Una.  ’At least, I sort of half believed till we learned “Farewell Rewards”.  Do you know “Farewell Rewards and Fairies"?’

‘Do you mean this?’ said Puck.  He threw his big head back and began at the second line: 

  ’Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
  Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less

(’Join in, Una!’)

Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?’

The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.

‘Of course I know it,’ he said.

‘And then there’s the verse about the rings,’ said Dan.  ’When I was little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.’

‘"Witness those rings and roundelays”, do you mean?’ boomed Puck, with a voice like a great church organ.