There's honesty enough in you, Nick, without
rasping and hawking.'
'Good people' - the man shrugged his lean shoulders - 'the
vulgar crowd love not truth unadorned. Wherefore we philosophers
must needs dress her to catch their eye or - ahem! - their ear.'
'And what d'you think of that?' said Puck solemnly to Dan.
'I don't know,' he answered. 'It sounds like lessons.'
'Ah - well! There have been worse men than Nick Culpeper to
take lessons from. Now, where can we sit that's not indoors?'
'In the hay-mow, next to old Middenboro,' Dan suggested.
'He doesn't mind.'
'Eh?' Mr Culpeper was stooping over the pale hellebore
blooms by the light of Una's lamp. 'Does Master Middenboro
need my poor services, then?'
'Save him, no!' said Puck. 'He is but a horse - next door to an
ass, as you'll see presently. Come!'
Their shadows jumped and slid on the fruit-tree walls. They
filed out of the garden by the snoring pig-pound and the crooning
hen-house, to the shed where Middenboro the old lawn-mower
pony lives. His friendly eyes showed green in the light as they set
their lamps down on the chickens' drinking-trough outside, and
pushed past to the hay-mow.
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