Which antipathy their creatures
do inherit. Whence, good people, you may both see and hear your
cattle stamp in their stalls for the self-same causes as decree the
passages of the stars across the unalterable face of Heaven! Ahem!'
Puck lay along chewing a leaf. They felt him shake with
laughter, and Mr Culpeper sat up stiffly.
'I myself" said he, 'have saved men's lives, and not a few
neither, by observing at the proper time - there is a time, mark
you, for all things under the sun - by observing, I say, so small a
beast as a rat in conjunction with so great a matter as this dread
arch above us.' He swept his hand across the sky. 'Yet there are
those,' he went on sourly, 'who have years without knowledge.'
'Right,' said Puck. 'No fool like an old fool.'
Mr Culpeper wrapped his cloak round him and sat still while
the children stared at the Great Bear on the hilltop.
'Give him time,' Puck whispered behind his hand. 'He turns
like a timber-tug - all of a piece.'
'Ahem!' Mr Culpeper said suddenly. 'I'll prove it to you. When
I was physician to Saye's Horse, and fought the King - or rather
the man Charles Stuart - in Oxfordshire (I had my learning at
Cambridge), the plague was very hot all around us.
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