ay
"fairies",' said Una. 'I was wondering at that. Don't you like it?'

'How would you like to be called "mortal" or "human being" all the
time?' said Puck; 'or "son of Adam" or "daughter of Eve"?'

'I shouldn't like it at all,' said Dan. 'That's how the Djinns and
Afrits talk in the Arabian Nights.'

'And that's how I feel about saying--that word that I don't say.
Besides, what you call them are made-up things the People of the Hills
have never heard of--little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze
petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a
schoolteacher's cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones. I
know 'em!'

'We don't mean that sort,'said Dan. 'We hate 'em too.'

'Exactly,' said Puck. 'Can you wonder that the People of the Hills
don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving,
sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed!
I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel
Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the
spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with
fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd
be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind
again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic--Magic as black as Merlin could
make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing
mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one
wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the
old days!'

'Splendid,' said Dan, but Una shuddered.

'I'm glad they're gone, then; but what made the People of the Hills go
away?' Una asked.

'Different things. I'll tell you one of them some day--the thing that
made the biggest flit of any,' said Puck. 'But they didn't all flit at
once. They dropped off, one by one, through the centuries. Most of
them were foreigners who couldn't stand our climate. They flitted
early.'

'How early?' said Dan.

'A couple of thousand years or more. The fact is they began as Gods.
The Phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the
Gauls, and the Jutes, and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles
brought more when they landed. They were always landing in those days,
or being driven back to their ships, and they always brought their Gods
with them. England is a bad country for Gods. Now, I began as I mean
to go on. A bowl of p