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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Rewards and Fairies"


'Her uncle's a vetinary surgeon near Banbury,' Una explained,
and if you ring her bell at night, it rings right beside her bed -not
downstairs at all. Then she 'umps up - she always keeps a pair of
dry boots in the fender, you know - and goes anywhere she's
wanted. We help her bicycle through gaps sometimes. Most of
her babies do beautifully. She told us so herself.'
'I doubt not, then, that she reads in my books,' said Mr
Culpeper quietly. 'Twins at the Mill!' he muttered half aloud.
"And again He sayeth, Return, ye children of men." '
'Are you a doctor or a rector?' Una asked, and Puck with a
shout turned head over heels in the hay. But Mr Culpeper was
quite serious. He told them that he was a physician-astrologer -a
doctor who knew all about the stars as well as all about herbs for
medicine. He said that the sun, the moon, and five Planets, called
Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and Venus, governed everybody
and everything in the world. They all lived in Houses - he
mapped out some of them against the dark with a busy forefinger -
and they moved from House to House like pieces at draughts;
and they went loving and hating each other all over the skies.


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