"Aw, Peter, us will die! I be a-going to see Master," groaned Mary.
Peter said he should come too. He was afraid to be left alone, with Grandfather ticking sardonically at him, and sweet-peas germinating in his bowels. If it had been only Mary who was suffering he would have prescribed for her; but as he was himself in pain he argued that it would be advisable to seek outside assistance. Master was a "brave larned man," and he would know what ought to be done to save their lives. They made themselves presentable, and laboured bitterly across the moor to St. Mary Tavy village.
Master was never out. He lived in a little whitewashed cottage near the road, gazing out of his front window all day, with a heap of books on a little table beside him, and pedantic spectacles upon his nose. He was nearly eighty, and belonged to the old school of dames and masters now practically extinct, an entirely ignorant class, who taught the children nothing because they were perfectly illiterate themselves. Master was held in reverence by the villagers. That pile of books, and the wonderful silver spectacles which he was always polishing with knowing glances, were to them symbols of unbounded knowledge. They brought their letters to the old man that he might read them aloud and explain obscure passages. Not a pig was killed without Master's knowledge, and not a child was christened until the Nestor of the neighbourhood had been consulted.
"Please to come in, varmer. Please to sot down, Mary," said Master, as he received the groaning pilgrims into his tiny owlery, "varmer" being the correct and lawful title of every commoner. "Have a drop o' cider, will ye? You'm welcome. I knows you be main cruel fond of a drop o' cider, varmer."
Peter was past cider just then. He groaned and Mary moaned, and they both doubled up in their chairs; while Master arranged his beautiful spectacles, and looked at them in a learned fashion, and at last hit upon the brilliant idea that they were afflicted with spasms of the abdomen.
"You've been yetting too many worts?" he suggested with kindly sympathy.
"Us be tilling peas in our bellies," explained Mary. .
Master had not much sense of humour. He thought at first the remark was made seriously, and he began to upbraid them for venturing on such daring experiments. But Mary went on: "Us bought pills to Goosie Vair, 'cause us ha' got too much oil in our livers, and us bought stinking-peas tu. Us ha' swallowed the peas, and tilled the pills. Us be gripped proper, so us ha' come right to wance to yew."
Master replied that they had done wisely. He played with his books, wiped his spectacles, and dusted the snuff from his nose with a handkerchief as big as a bath-towel. Then he folded his gnarled hands peacefully across his brass watch-chain, and talked to them like a good physician.
"I'll tell ye why you'm gripped," he said. "'Tis because you swallowed them peas instead o' the pills. Du'ye understand what I be telling?"