All Creatures Great and Small Read Online Free Page B

moustache, untidy, sandy hair. He was wearing an old tweed jacket and shapeless flannel trousers. The collar of his check shirt was frayed and the tie carelessly knotted. He looked as though he didn’t spend much time in front of a mirror.
    Studying him, I began to feel better despite the ache in my neck where it had rested against the tree. I shook my head to get my eyes fully open and tufts of grass fell from my hair. “There was a Miss Brompton here,” I blurted out. “She came to tea. I explained you had been called away.”
    Farnon looked thoughtful, but not put out. He rubbed his chin slowly. “Mm, yes—well, never mind. But I do apologise for being out when you arrived. I have a shocking memory and I just forgot.”
    It was the most English voice, too.
    Farnon gave me a long, searching look, then he grinned. “Let’s go inside. I want to show you round the place.”

THREE
    T HE LONG OFFSHOOT BEHIND the house had been the servants’ quarters in grander days. Here, everything was dark and narrow and poky as if in deliberate contrast with the front.
    Farnon led me to the first of several doors which opened off a passage where the smell of ether and carbolic hung on the air. “This,” he said, with a secret gleam in his eye as though he were about to unveil the mysteries of Aladdin’s cave, “is the dispensary.”
    The dispensary was an important place in the days before penicillin and the sulphonamides. Rows of gleaming Winchester bottles lined the white walls from floor to ceiling. I savoured the familiar names: Sweet Spirits of Nitre, Tincture of Camphor, Chlorodyne, Formalin, Salammoniac, Hexamine, Sugar of Lead, Linimentum Album, Perchloride of Mercury, Red Blister. The lines of labels were comforting.
    I was an initiate among old friends. I had painfully accumulated their lore, ferreting out their secrets over the years. I knew their origins, actions and uses, and their maddeningly varied dosage. The examiner’s voice—“And what is the dose for the horse?—and the cow?—and the sheep?—and the pig?—and the dog?—and the cat?”
    These shelves held the vet’s entire armoury against disease and, on a bench under the window, I could see the instruments for compounding them; the graduated vessels and beakers, the mortars and pestles. And underneath, in an open cupboard, the medicine bottles, piles of corks of all sizes, pill boxes, powder papers.
    As we moved around, Farnon’s manner became more and more animated. His eyes glittered and he talked rapidly. Often, he reached up and caressed a Winchester on its shelf; or he would lift out a horse-ball or an electuary from its box, give it a friendly pat and replace it with tenderness.
    “Look at this stuff, Herriot,” he shouted without warning. “Adrevan! This is the remedy, par excellence, for red worms in horses. A bit expensive, mind you—ten bob a packet. And these gentian violet pessaries. If you shove one of these into a cow’s uterus after a dirty cleansing, it turns the discharges a very pretty colour. Really looks as though it’s doing something. And have you seen this trick?”
    He placed a few crystals of resublimated iodine on a glass dish and added a drop of turpentine. Nothing happened for a second then a dense cloud of purple smoke rolled heavily to the ceiling. He gave a great bellow of laughter at my startled face.
    “Like witchcraft, isn’t it? I use it for wounds in horses’ feet. The chemical reaction drives the iodine deep into the tissues.”
    “It does?”
    “Well, I don’t know, but that’s the theory, and anyway, you must admit it looks wonderful. Impresses the toughest client.”
    Some of the bottles on the shelves fell short of the ethical standards I had learned in college. Like the one labelled “Colic Drench” and featuring a floridly drawn picture of a horse rolling in agony. The animal’s face was turned outwards and wore an expression of very human anguish. Another bore the legend “Universal Cattle