‘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. The mother we put--forced--into the house with her babes. She had done enough.
‘And now, good people, give me leave to be particular in this case. The plague was worst on the north side of the street, for lack, as I showed ‘em, of sunshine; which, proceeding from the PRIME MOBILE, or source of life (I speak astrologically), is cleansing and purifying in the highest degree. The plague was hot too by the corn-chandler’s, where they sell forage to the carters, extreme hot in both Mills, along the river, and scatteringly in other places, except, mark you, at the smithy. Mark here, that all forges and smith shops belong to Mars, even as corn and meat and wine shops acknowledge Venus for their mistress. There was no plague in the smithy at Munday’s Lane--’
‘Munday’s Lane? You mean our village? I thought so when you talked about the two Mills,’ cried Dan. ‘Where did we put the plague-stone? I’d like to have seen it.’
‘Then look at it now,’ said Puck, and pointed to the chickens’ drinking-trough where they had set their bicycle lamps. It was a rough, oblong stone pan, rather like a small kitchen sink, which Phillips, who never wastes anything, had found in a ditch and had used for his precious hens.
‘That?’ said Dan and Una, and stared, and stared, and stared. Mr Culpeper made impatient noises in his throat and went on.
‘I am at these pains to be particular, good people, because I would have you follow, so far as you may, the operations of my mind. That plague which I told you I had handled outside Wallingford in Oxfordshire was of a watery nature, conformable to the brookish riverine country it bred in, and curable, as I have said, by drenching in water. This plague of ours here, for all that it flourished along watercourses--every soul at both Mills died of it,--could not be so handled. Which brought me to a stand. Ahem!’