As Meat Loves Salt Read Online Free PDF

as you'll never live down.'
    'He embraces her.'
    'Because he sees her unhappy! And should they kiss, what is it to you? You are not espoused, and if you like it not the remedy lies in your own hands.'
    I was stunned, partly at this view of the matter, but mostly at what he had said of Zeb. 'Zeb in love? Who?'
    'O, a certain maid whose ear he has been nibbling, full in your view, these past months. She has two eyes and a mouth and her name begins with P.'
    Things that I had taken for jests came back to me: Zeb arm-wrestling Patience, or begging a lock of her hair 'for lying on a maiden's hair brings a man sweet sleep'.
    'Caro does not wish to break off, then—?' I faltered.
    Izzy rolled his eyes.
    I went on, 'Yet they spoke of cruelty - said it was cruel.'
    'You. You're cruel to Caro.'
    'To Caro ...?'They had talked of a he. I was about to explain his mistake when the truth came to me. The cruelty Zeb had spoken of was my own, and the sufferer Izzy. My elder brother had never ceased
    to love Caro, that was it; he had but loved her more tenderly as she turned away from the shared kindnesses of their early years towards something different with me. O Izzy Izzy: he was the better man of us two, I own it freely, but he was not the sort of man a maid dreams of taking to her bed, and he had been forced to learn it over and over as he watched me win her. I could hardly bear to look at him as he sat there, smiling in defeat.
    'Cruel to Caro, yes.' I must now conceal my pity.
    'I would see her happy,' he returned simply. 'I thought her happiness must lie with you.'
    He it was, I remembered now, who had first told me of her preference.
    'But I begin to think I was mistaken.' Izzy stared ahead of him. 'Lord, what brothers I have. One eats women and the other starves them.' His voice trembled as he rose to leave the room.
    'Don't go, Izzy.' I flung my arms round him from behind. 'Wait and see — I will declare myself.’ Even as I said it I felt what a bittersweet promise this must be to him.
    He turned to me and we pressed our faces together, the way we had always made up our quarrels as children. I had to bend down now, having so far outgrown my childhood protector. His face was damp around the eyes and for a moment I felt with horror that he was about to cry, but his gaze was bright and steady.
    As he put me away from him, Izzy said quietly, 'You are near as handsome as he, and bigger.'
    'Don't make me more of a fool than I am,' I answered.
    "There, I knew you would not hear it.'
    'You love me too well, Izzy.'
    He sighed. 'Very well, think yourself ugly. But Jacob,' he went on, 'be not so harsh with Zeb.'
    I said I would not.
    Going to seek out Caro, I found Zeb and Patience in the scullery, his arms about her as she scraped at a dirty dish, and I wondered at my blindness for so long. My own darling I discovered moping in the great hall. When she saw me she rose, and would have quitted the
    room, but I stepped up to her and begged her forgiveness. Before we parted that night, our betrothal was a settled thing.
    The Mistress furnished Caro with a good dowry. All the money I could afford for her portion had been put by out of my own sweat, and was not bad considering the little that servants such as ourselves could scratch together. Neither of us could fairly hope for more if we meant to stay where we were.
    My brothers and myself had been born to better fortunes than we enjoyed, but our father, though godly, was strangely improvident. I found my inheritance wasted and my estate encumbered, was his constant cry throughout my childhood. Yet all shall be paid off, and you, Isaiah, shall inherit —
    Dust and debt. There was nothing else for Izzy to come into. The day after we buried Father, I found Mother weeping in her chamber, the steward standing over her and papers scattered all around.
    'Jacob,' she screamed at me as if it were my doing, 'O my boy, my boy,' and fell to tearing her lace collar. I took it for the grief, and wept along