Free With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) by Ruth Glover Page A

indeed, numerous eruptions blossomed from ear to large ear and hairline to sensitive, tender mouth and chin.
    “He’s no worse than I was at his age,” the man offered. “He’ll outgrow the skin problems; kids always do.”
    “Still, if there is something that can be done—”
    “It don’t bother me none, Ma,” Dudley said mildly and resumed his chewing.
    “I despair of your grammar,” Della lamented, sidetracked for the moment. “Not don’t, and not Ma, for heaven’s sake! You sound just like the Jurgensons! Perhaps Scandinavians don’t know better, but you are English, Dudley, pure English. Now, what were you saying—correctly, if you please.”
    “It doesn’t bother me, Mum,” Dudley said meekly, but not too meekly to refuse to say Mummy.
    “Now, hon,” Henley interjected smoothly, as though from long practice, “what is this about pimples?”
    “Impure blood. They’re caused by impure blood,” Della said with the air of one unearthing a gold mine. “Doesn’t that sound reasonable?”
    “Impure blood?” Henley repeated, peppering his eggs. “With all this good farm food, milk, and all? I find that hard to believe. It’s probably some blockage of the pores, probably too much oil. It’s just an overabundance of youthful, er—” Henley hesitated, ignorant of the word hormones and at a loss to acceptably explain the masculine tides rising in the young man’s system—“vigor,” he finished inadequately.
    “Vigor! The only vigor I see is in his eating.” Della watched a final bite of toast disappear into her son’s mouth, noted the working of the prominent Adam’s apple in the thin throat, sighed, and turned to the paper and her original thought.
    “Yes, impure blood,” she repeated, “and these people should know what they’re talking about much more than you do, Henley. ‘Pimples and sores,’” she read, “‘are all positive signs of impure blood. No matter how it became so, it must be purified in order to obtain good health.’”
    “He has excellent health,” Henley observed. “He’s just growing fast, is all. Here, let me see that.”
    Della turned the paper over to her husband grudgingly. “Why can’t you just believe what I say, for heaven’s sake?”
    Henley located the proper place and said, “This lists additional signs of impure blood as ‘dull headache, pains in various parts of the body, sinking at the pit of the stomach’—say, I had sinking in the stomach just before I sat down here. Do you suppose that means I have impure blood?” Henley laughed, and Dudley with him. Henley was the picture of health.
    “Pet,” Della said in a certain tight tone, and both man and boy knew to beware; “Pet” spoken in this way and in this tone was not an affectionate name. She proceeded in her most gentle voice, “I have great confidence in your wisdom, Henley; you know that. But shall we consider whether, by some chance, this company—trained and practiced in the art of identifying and curing bodily ills—may be better qualified to judge such matters.”Then, gentling her tone even more until it was a soft purr, she finished with the knockout punch: “Wouldn’t you agree, . . . Hen? ”
    With “Hen,” a shortening of his name meant to equate his brains with those of a barnyard chicken and only used in contempt, Henley seemed to deflate like a pricked balloon. He gave his wife one sober glance and then turned his attention to his breakfast. One had the idea that the food was not only cold but tasteless in his mouth.
    “It says,” Della continued smoothly, “that it is a wonderful remedy and every bottle is sold with a positive guarantee. Now, isn’t it worth a few cents to give your one and only son a beautiful complexion?”
    “Of course, hon. Whatever you say.”
    Dudley could never understand his father’s quiet compliance, his capitulation in every confrontation. Too young to understand the strength it took to do it, and not fully appreciating