rse--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. Mr Culpeper
stooped at the door.

'Mind where you lie,' said Dan. 'This hay's full of hedge-brishings.

'In! in!' said Puck. 'You've lain in fouler places than this, Nick.
Ah! Let us keep touch with the stars!' He kicked open the top of the
half-door, and pointed to the clear sky. 'There be the planets you
conjure with! What does your wisdom make of that wandering and variable
star behind those apple boughs?'

The children smiled. A bicycle that they knew well was being walked down
the steep lane. 'Where?' Mr Culpeper leaned forward quickly. 'That? Some
countryman's lantern.'

'Wrong, Nick,' said Puck. ''Tis a singular bright star in Virgo,
declining towards the house of Aquarius the water-carrier, who hath
lately been afflicted by Gemini. Aren't I right, Una?' Mr Culpeper
snorted contemptuously.

'No. It's the village nurse going down to the Mill about some fresh
twins that came there last week. Nurse,' Una called, as the light
stopped on the flat, 'when can I see the Morris twins? And how are
they?'

'Next Sunday, perhaps. Doing beautifully,' the Nurse called back, and
with a ping-ping-ping of the bell brushed round the corner.

'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