She was his wife.
'When he had thanked God, even to tears, he tells me this was
not the welcome he had intended, and presses me to flee the place
while I was clean.
'"Nay! The Lord do so to me and more also if I desert thee now,"
I said. "These affairs are, under God's leave, in some
fashion my strength."
'"Oh, sir," she says, "are you a physician? We have none."
'"Then, good people," said I, "I must e'en justify myself to
you by my works."
'"Look - look ye," stammers Jack, "I took you all this time for
a crazy Roundhead preacher." He laughs, and she, and then I - all
three together in the rain are overtook by an unreasonable gust or
clap of laughter, which none the less eased us. We call it in
medicine the Hysterical Passion. So I went home with 'em.'
'Why did you not go on to your cousin at Great Wigsell, Nick?'
Puck suggested. ''tis barely seven mile up the road.'
'But the plague was here,' Mr Culpeper answered, and pointed
up the hill. 'What else could I have done?'
'What were the parson's children called?' said Una.
'Elizabeth, Alison, Stephen, and Charles - a babe. I scarce saw
them at first, for I separated to live with their father in a cart-
lodge.
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