Free All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot Page B

showed that they had been appreciatively observing me gawping at their sister.
    “That’s enough, you two,” Auntie Lucy reproved. “Anyway you can go now, we’re going to clear the table.”
    Helen and she began to move the dishes to the scullery beyond the door while Mr. Alderson and I returned to our chairs by the fireside.
    The little man ushered me to mine with a vague wave of the hand. “Here…take a seat, er…young man.”
    A clattering issued from the kitchen as the washing-up began. We were alone.
    Mr. Alderson’s hand strayed automatically towards his Farmer and Stockbreeders but he withdrew it after a single hunted glance in my direction and began to drum his fingers on the arm of the chair, whistling softly under his breath.
    I groped desperately for an opening gambit but came up with nothing. The ticking of the clock boomed out into the silence. I was beginning to break out into a sweat when the little man cleared his throat
    “Pigs were a good trade on Monday,” he vouchsafed.
    “They were, eh? Well, that’s fine—jolly good.”
    Mr. Alderson nodded, fixed his gaze somewhere above my left shoulder and started drumming his fingers again. Once more the heavy silence blanketed us and the clock continued to hammer out its message.
    After several years Mr. Alderson stirred in his seat and gave a little cough. I looked at him eagerly.
    “Store cattle were down, though,” he said.
    “Ah, too bad, what a pity,” I babbled. “But that’s how it goes, I suppose, eh?”
    Helen’s father shrugged and we settled down again. This time I knew it was hopeless. My mind was a void and my companion had the defeated look of a man who has shot his conversational bolt. I lay back and studied the hams and sides of bacon hanging from their hooks in the ceiling, then I worked my way along the row of plates on the big oak dresser to a gaudy calendar from a cattle cake firm which dangled from a nail on the wall. I took a chance then and stole a glance at Mr. Alderson out of the corner of my eye and my toes curled as I saw he had chosen that precise moment to have a sideways peep at me. We both looked away hurriedly.
    By shifting round in my seat and craning my neck I was able to get a view of the other side of the kitchen where there was an old-fashioned roll top desk surmounted by a wartime picture of Mr. Anderson looking very stern in the uniform of the Yorkshire Yeomanry, and I was proceeding along the wall from there when Helen opened the door and came quickly into the room.
    “Dad,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Stan’s here. He says one of the cows is down with staggers.”
    Her father jumped up in obvious relief. I think he was delighted he had a sick cow and I, too, felt like a released prisoner as I hurried out with him.
    Stan, one of the cowmen, was waiting in the yard.
    “She’s at t’op of t’field, boss,” he said. “I just spotted ’er when I went to get them in for milkin’.”
    Mr. Alderson looked at me questioningly and I nodded at him as I opened the car door.
    “I’ve got the stuff with me,” I said. “We’d better drive straight up.”
    The three of us piled in and I set course to where I could see the stretched-out form of a cow near the wall in the top corner. My bottles and instruments rattled and clattered as we bumped over the rig and furrow.
    This was something every vet gets used to in early summer; the urgent call to milk cows which have collapsed suddenly a week or two after being turned out to grass. The farmers called it grass staggers and as its scientific name of hypomagesaemia implied it was associated with lowered magnesium level in the blood. An alarming and highly fatal condition but fortunately curable by injection of magnesium in most cases.
    Despite the seriousness of the occasion I couldn’t repress a twinge of satisfaction. It had got me out of the house and it gave me a chance to prove myself by doing something useful. Helen’s father and I hadn’t