They ran to meet him, and the
man said something to them about _rooms_ in their head. After a time
they understood he was warning them not to catch colds.

'You've a bit of a cold yourself, haven't you?' said Una, for he ended
all his sentences with a consequential cough. Puck laughed.

'Child,' the man answered, 'if it hath pleased Heaven to afflict me with
an infirmity----'

'Nay, nay,' Puck struck in, 'the maid spoke out of kindness. _I_ know
that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and that's a
pity. 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. 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