animal stories by James Herriot Read Free Book Online

for this and the minutes flowed past unnoticed as we stood there, our feet on the black and red eighteenth-century tiles, our heads almost touching the vast picture of the Death of Nelson which dominated the entrance.
    We kissed again at the first bend of the passage under the companion picture of the Meeting of Wellington and Bl@ucher at Waterloo. We kissed at the second bend by the tall cupboard where Siegfried kept his riding coats and boots. We kissed in the dispensary in between searching for my instruments. Then we tried it out in the garden and this was the best of all, with the flowers still and expectant in the moonlight and the fragrance of the moist earth and grass rising about us.
    I have never driven so slowly to a case. About ten miles an hour with Helen’s head on my shoulder and all the scents of spring drifting in through the open window. And it was like sailing from stormy seas into a sweet, safe harbor, like coming home.
    The light in the cottage window was the only one showing in the sleeping village and when I knocked at the door Bert Chapman answered. Bert was a council roadman—one of the breed for whom I felt an abiding affinity. The councilmen were my brethren of the roads. Like me they spent most of their lives on the lonely byways around Darrowby and I saw them most days of the week, repairing the tarmac, cutting back the grass verges in the summer, gritting and snow plowing in the winter.
    I had seen Bert Chapman just a day or two ago, siting on a grassy bank, his shovel by his side, a vast sandwich in his hand. He had raised a corded forearm in salute, a broad smile bisecting his round, sun-reddened face. He had looked eternally care, free but tonight his smile was strained.
    “I’m sorry to bother you this late, Mr. Herriot,” he said as he ushered us into the house, “but I’m gettin’ a bit worried about Susie. Her pups are due and she’s been making a bed for them and messing about all day but nowt’s happened. I was goin’ to leave her till morning but about midnight she started panting like ‘ell—I don’t like the look of her.”
    Susie was one of my regular patients. Her big, burly master was always bringing her to the surgery, a little shamefaced at his solicitude, and when I saw him sitting in the waiting room looking strangely out of place among the ladies with their pets, he usually said, “T’missus asked me to bring Susie.” But it was a transparent excuse.
    “She’s nobbut a little mongrel, but very faithful,” Bert said, still apologetic, but I could understand how he felt about Susie, a shaggy little ragamuffin whose only wile was to put her paws on my knees and laugh up into my face with her tail lashing. I found her irresistible.
    But she was a very different character tonight. As we went into the living room of the cottage the little animal crept from her basket, gave a single indeterminate wag of her tail, then stood miserably in the middle of the floor, her ribs heaving. As I bent to examine her she turned a wide, panting mouth and anxious eyes up to me.
    I ran my hands over her abdomen. I don’t think I have ever felt a more bloated little dog; she was as round as a football, absolutely bulging with pups, ready to pop, but nothing was happening.
    “What do you think?” Bert’s face was haggard under his sunburn and he touched the dog’s head briefly with a big calloused hand.
    “I don’t know yet, Bert,” I said. “I’ll have to have a feel inside. Bring me some hot water, will you?”
    I added some antiseptic to the water, soaped my hand and with one finger carefully explored inside. There was a pup there, all right; my fingertip brushed across the nostrils, the tiny mouth and tongue, but he was jammed in that passage like a cork in a bottle.
    Squatting back on my heels I turned to the Chapmans. “I’m afraid there’s a big pup stuck fast. I have a feeling that if she could get rid of this chap the others would come away. They’d probably be