“Poor old chap,” said a chorus of sympathising voices, and after bandaging and splinting the injuries I sent the man home.
He was too healthy and active a man to be ill long, and he rapidly improved, and in the course of my attendance I used to smile to myself and wonder whether Darwin was not right about our descent from the monkeys; for certainly the climbing propensity was very strong in Fred Fincher, who used to laugh when I talked to him about the folly of men to climb.
“Well, I dunno, sir,” he said, “climbing’s very useful sometimes. I’m a carpenter, and I have to climb a good deal about housetops in my trade, and nobody says it’s foolish then.”
“That’s a necessity,” I replied. “Yours was only a bit of foolish bravado.”
“Well, suppose it was, doctor,” he said smiling. “Anyhow I was not killed. It was nothing like getting up to oil the weathercock after all.”
“Oil what weathercock?” I said.
“Our weathercock, sir.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean at the old place, sir. You see this is how it was:—
“We’d got a weathercock a-top of our church spire at High Beechy; and it was a cock in real earnest, just like the great Dorking in Farmer Granger’s yard; only the one on the spire was gilt, and shone in the sun quite beautiful.