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Updated: May 26, 2025
There was not down on their bodies to make them fluffy and pretty, like Peter Piper's children. They were just sprawling little bits of crow-life, so helpless that it would have been quite pitiful if they had not had a good patient mother and a father who seemed never to get tired of hunting for food.
Now and then, between the sobbing of Piper's Hole, the children caught the murmur of the tide race, half-a-mile off shore, slackening its note as it neared the time of high-water and its turning point. Out there the sea was agitated; within the line of the race, sharply defined on the gray, it heaved and sank on an oily swell.
"I must go down," replied Morton, "to Niel Blane the Piper's Howff; he can give me a bed, I suppose?" "A bed? I'se warrant can he," replied Ailie, "and gar ye pay weel for 't into the bargain. Laddie, I daresay ye hae lost your wits in thae foreign parts, to gang and gie siller for a supper and a bed, and might hae baith for naething, and thanks t' ye for accepting them."
Then the Piper's mouth grew strange and thin, and sharp blue and green lights began dancing in his eyes, and he said to the Mayor very softly, "I know another tune than that I played; I play it to those who play me false." "Play what you please! You can't frighten me! Do your worst!" said the Mayor, making himself big.
"He's been with us ever since. Piper's been tryin to make a Christian of him." "What's his story?" "I don't know, and he can't tell us. He knows nothing not even fear. I call him Blob, because blob's his nature. Piper found the name Hoad on his shirt. I daresay his people sold him to the Gap Gang; and they kept him." "To be cruel to?" shuddered Kit. "Not they," laughed the Parson.
When a rose blossoms, then goes to sleep, does it wait for more than a year before it blooms again? Is it more than a year from bud to bud, from flower to flower, from fruit to fruit? 'T is God's way of showing that a year of darkness is enough, at a time." The Piper's voice was very tender; the little dog lay still at his feet.
What was this? The children had disappeared, the Piper was gone, and Doris sat by the window, and her book had dropped to the floor. She rubbed her eyes. "It was a dream," she said. "It is the Piper's wonderful way; he has left me here to work and wait, so that I may make the world beautiful at last." And she smiled and clapped her hands as the wind swept round the corner.
Niel, a clean, tight, well-timbered, long-winded fellow, had gained the official situation of town-piper of by his merit, with all the emoluments thereof; namely, the Piper's Croft, as it is still called, a field of about an acre in extent, five merks, and a new livery-coat of the town's colours, yearly; some hopes of a dollar upon the day of the election of magistrates, providing the provost were able and willing to afford such a gratuity; and the privilege of paying, at all the respectable houses in the neighbourhood, an annual visit at spring-time, to rejoice their hearts with his music, to comfort his own with their ale and brandy, and to beg from each a modicum of seed-corn.
The sinister woman's repetition of Piper's curious remark, "'E says sometimes as what 'e ought to give 'imself up, and say what 'e saw," came back to her with sickening vividness. She looked round her, timorously. The candles on her dressing-table gave such a poor light. How stupid of a village like Beechfield not to have electric light! She stood up and rang for a hot-water bottle.
Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for the right purpose, should ever daur to crook a hough to fyke and fling at piper's wind and fiddler's squealing.
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