‘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 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.’