. 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 jumps 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. If you
knew their likes and dislikes, he said, you could make them cure your
patient and hurt your enemy, and find out the secret causes of things.
He talked of these five Planets as though they belonged to him, or as
though he were playing long games against them. The children burrowed in
the hay up to their chins, and looked out over the half door at the
solemn, star-powdered sky till they seemed to be falling upside down
into it, while Mr. Culpeper talked about 'trines' and 'oppositions' and
'conjunctions' and 'sympathies' and 'antipathies' in a tone that just
matched things.

A rat ran between Middenboro's feet, and the old pony stamped.

'Mid hates rats,' said Dan, and passed him over a lock of hay. 'I wonder
why.'

'Divine Astrology tells us,' said Mr. Culpeper. 'The horse, being a
martial beast that beareth man to battle, belongs naturally to the red
pl