Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

‘Right,’ said Puck. ‘No fool like an old fool.’
Rewards and Fairies
Therefore be plain, old Hyssop on the Wall!’
Mr Culpeper wrapped his cloak round him and sat still ‘To be plain and in order with you, I was shot in the chest
while the children stared at the Great Bear on the hilltop. while gathering of betony from a brookside near Thame, and
‘Give him time,’ Puck whispered behind his hand. ‘He turns was took by the King’s men before their Colonel, one Blagg
like a timber-tug—all of a piece.’
or Bragge, whom I warned honestly that I had spent the week
‘Ahem!’ Mr Culpeper said suddenly. ‘I’ll prove it to you. past among our plague-stricken. He flung me off into a
When I was physician to Saye’s Horse, and fought the King— cowshed, much like this here, to die, as I supposed; but one
or rather the man Charles Stuart—in Oxfordshire (I had my of their priests crept in by night and dressed my wound. He
learning at Cambridge), the plague was very hot all around was a Sussex man like myself.’
us. I saw it at close hands. He who says I am ignorant of the ‘Who was that?’ said Puck suddenly. ‘Zack Tutshom?’
plague, for example, is altogether beside the bridge.’
‘No, Jack Marget,’ said Mr Culpeper.
‘We grant it,’ said Puck solemnly. ‘But why talk of the plague ‘Jack Marget of New College? The little merry man that
this rare night?’
stammered so? Why a plague was stuttering Jack at Oxford
‘To prove my argument. This Oxfordshire plague, good then?’ said Puck.
people, being generated among rivers and ditches, was of a ‘He had come out of Sussex in hope of being made a Bishop
werish, watery nature. Therefore it was curable by drenching when the King should have conquered the rebels, as he styled
the patient in cold water, and laying him in wet cloths; or at us Parliament men. His College had lent the King some
least, so I cured some of them. Mark this. It bears on what monies too, which they never got again, no more than simple
shall come after.’
Jack got his bishopric. When we met he had had a bitter
‘Mark also, Nick,’ said Puck, that we are not your College bellyful of King’s promises, and wished to return to his wife
of Physicians, but only a lad and a lass and a poor lubberkin. and babes. This came about beyond expectation, for, so soon
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