Every Living Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

plate—I had one of the roughest, dirtiest jobs in the world and could only aim at reasonable respectability—and I always had the comforting knowledge that I did have one “good suit,” which had lasted for many years simply because it was hardly ever worn.
    But it was indeed strange that I should be perpetually hard up. Siegfried and I had built up a good, successful practice. I worked nearly all the time, seven days a week, in the evenings and often during the night, and it was hard work, too—rolling about on cobbled floors fighting with tough calvings to the point of exhaustion, getting kicked, crushed, trodden on and sprayed with muck. Often, I spent days with every muscle in my body aching. But I still had only a niggling and immovable overdraft of £1,000 to show for it all.
    Of course, most of my time was spent driving a car. You didn’t get paid for that, and maybe it was the reason for my situation. Yet the driving, the work and the whole rich life was spent out in the open in this glorious countryside. I really loved it all and it was only when I was accused of being a kind of agricultural con man that the contradiction came home to me.
    As the road climbed higher I began to see the church tower and roofs of Darrowby and, at last, on the edge of the town, the gates of Mrs. Pumphrey’s beautiful home lay beckoning. I looked at my watch—twelve noon. Long practice had enabled me to time my visits here just before lunch when I could escape the rigours of country practice and wallow for a little while in the hospitality of the elderly widow who had brightened my life for so long.
    As my tyres crunched on the gravel of the drive I smiled as Tricki Woo appeared at the window to greet me. He was old now, but he could still get up there to his vantage point and his Pekingese face was split as always by a panting grin of welcome.
    Mounting the steps in the twin pillars of the doorway, I could see that he had left the window and I heard his joyous barking in the hall. Ruth, the long-serving maid, answered my ring, beaming with pleasure as Tricki flung himself at my knees.
    “Eee, he’s glad to see you, Mr. ’erriot,” she said, and, laying a hand on my arm, “We all are!”
    She ushered me into the gracious drawing room, where Mrs. Pumphrey was sitting in an armchair by the fire. She raised her white head from her book and cried out in delight, “Ah, Mr. Herriot. How very, very nice! And Tricki, isn’t it wonderful to have Uncle Herriot visiting again!”
    She waved me to the armchair opposite. “I have been expecting you for Tricki’s check-up, but before you examine him you must sit down and warm yourself. It is so terribly cold. Ruth, my dear, will you bring Mr. Herriot a glass of sherry. You will say yes, won’t you, Mr. Herriot?”
    I murmured my thanks. I always said yes to the very special sherry, which came in enormous glasses and was deeply heartening at all times but on cold days in particular. I sank into the cushions and stretched my legs towards the flames that leaped in the fireplace, and as I took my first sip and Ruth deposited a plate of tiny biscuits by my side while the little dog climbed onto my knee, the last of the hostile Sidlow vibes slipped gently away from me.
    “Tricki has been awfully well since your last visit, Mr. Herriot,” Mrs. Pumphrey said. “I know he is always going to be a little stiff with his arthritis but he does get around so well, and his little heart cough is no worse. And best of all,” she clasped her hands together and her eyes widened, “he hasn’t gone flop-bott at all. Not once! So perhaps you won’t have to squeeze the poor darling.”
    “Oh, no, I won’t. Certainly not. I only do that if he really needs it.” I had been squeezing Tricki Woo’s bottom for many years because of his anal gland trouble so graphically named by his mistress and the little animal had never resented it. I stroked his head as Mrs. Pumphrey went on.
    “There is something