Morgan’s Run Read Online Free PDF

pray for my own soul, that I have not done murder. Have you some vinegar and oil of tar? I would wash my hands.”
    Mag produced a small jug of vinegar, a bottle of oil of tar, a pewter dish and a clean clout.
    “Nothing will happen for three or four days,” he said as he rubbed away, “but then, if it takes, he will develop a fever. If it has taken to the proper degree, the fever will not be malign. And at some time the inoculation itself will fester, produce a pustule, and burst. All going well, ’twill be the only one. But I cannot say for sure, and I do not thank ye for this business.”
    “You are the best man in Bristol, Cousin James!” cried Mr. Thistlethwaite jovially.
    Cousin James-the-druggist paused in the doorway. “I am not your cousin, Jem Thistlethwaite—ye have no relations! Not even a mother,” he said in freezing tones, pushed his wig back onto his head properly, and vanished.
    Mine Host shook with laughter. “That is telling ye, Jem!”
    “Aye,” grinned Jem, unabashed. “Do not worry,” he said to Richard, “God would not dare offend Cousin James.”

    Having walked for much longer than he had prayed, Richard arrived back at the Cooper’s Arms just in time to give a hand with supper. Barley broth made on beef shins tonight, with plump, bacony dumplings simmering in it, as well as the usual fare of bread, butter, cheese, cake and liquid refreshments.
    The panic had died down and Broad Street was back to normal except that John/Samuel Adams and John Hancock still swung from the signpost of the American Coffee House. They would probably, Richard reflected, remain there until time and weather blew their stuffing all over the place and naught was left save limp rags.
    Nodding to his father as he passed, Richard scrambled upstairs to the back half of the room at their top, which Dick had partitioned off in the customary way—a few planks from floor to near the ceiling, not snugly tenoned and joined like the wales of ships, but rather held together by an occasional strut and therefore full of cracks, some wide enough to put an eye to.
    Richard and Peg’s back room held an excellent double bed with thick linen curtains drawn about it from rails connecting its four tall posts, several chests for clothing, a cupboard for shoes and boots, a mirror on one wall for Peg to prink in front of, a dozen hooks on the same wall, and William Henry’s gimbaled cot. There were no fifteen-shillings-a-yard wallpapers, no damask hangings, no carpets on the oak floor so old it had gone black two centuries ago, but it was quite as good a room as any one would see in any house of similar standing, namely of the middling classes.
    Peg was by the cot, swinging it gently back and forth.
    “How is he, my love?”
    She looked up, smiling contentedly. “It has taken. He has a fever, but it is not burning him up. Cousin James-the-druggist came while you were walking, and seemed very relieved. He thinks William Henry will recover without developing the full pox.”
    Because his left upper arm was sore, Richard assumed, William Henry lay sleeping on his right side with the offending limb drawn comfortably across his chest. Where the needle had passed through the flesh a great red welt was growing; his palm almost touching it, Richard could feel the heat in the thing.
    “It is early!” he exclaimed.
    “Cousin James says it often is after inoculation.”
    Knees shaking from the sheer relief of learning that his son had survived his ordeal, Richard went to a hook on the wall and plucked his stout canvas apron from it. “I must help father. Thank God, thank God!” He was still thanking God as he bounded down the stairs, it having slipped his mind that until he saw William Henry’s pustule developing, he had quite given up on God.
    For places like the Cooper’s Arms the relaxed atmosphere of long summer evenings brought benefits in its wake; the tavern’s regular clientele were respectable people who earned a better than