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Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
page 4 of 263 (01%)
Water or Wood or Air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.



The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as
much as they could remember of Midsummer Night's
Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the
big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him
and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They
began when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the
bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds
Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped
to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch
his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he
falls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick
Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy-
cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey's head out
of a Christmas cracker - but it tore if you were not careful
- for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of
columbines and a foxglove wand.

The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A
little mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three
fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the
middle of the bend lay a large old Fairy Ring of darkened
grass, which was the stage. The millstream banks, overgrown
with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient
places to wait in till your turn came; and a
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