James Herriot Read Online Free

chance to do anything.
    Lord Hulton looked down at the animal which had just stopped breathing. “Do you think we could salvage her for meat if we bled her?”
    “Well, it’s typical hypomag. Nothing to harm anybody … you could try. It would depend on what the meat inspector says.”
    The cow was bled, pulled into a van and the peer drove off to the abattoir. He came back just as we were finishing the test.
    “How did you get on?” I asked him. “Did they accept her?”
    He hesitated. “No … no, old chap,” he said sadly. “I’m afraid they didn’t.”
    “Why? Did the meat inspector condemn the carcass?”
    “Well … I never got as far as the meat inspector, actually just saw one of the slaughtermen.”
    “And what did he say?”
    “Just two words, Herriot.”
    “Two words …?”
    “Yes … ‘Bugger off!’ ”
    I nodded. “I see.” It was easy to imagine the scene. The tough slaughterman viewing the small, unimpressive figure and deciding that he wasn’t going to be put out of his routine by some ragged farm man.
    “Well, never mind, sir,” I said. “You can only try.”
    “True … true, old chap.” He dropped a few matches as he fumbled disconsolately with his smoking equipment.
    As I was getting into the car I remembered about the Propamidine. “Don’t forget to call down for that cream, will you?”
    “By Jove, yes! I’ll come down for it after lunch. I have great faith in that Prom … Pram … Charlie! Damn and blast what is it?”
    Charlie drew himself up proudly. “Propopamide, m’lord.”
    “Ah yes, Propopamide!” The little man laughed, his good humour quite restored. “Good lad, Charlie, you’re a marvel!”
    “Thank you, m’lord.” The foreman wore the smug expression of the expert as he drove the cattle back into the field.
    It’s a funny thing, but when you see a client about something you very often see him soon again about something else. It was only a week later, with the district still in the iron grip of winter, that my bedside ’phone jangled me from slumber.
    After that first palpitation of the heart which I feel does vets no good at all I reached a sleepy hand from under the sheets.
    “Yes?” I grunted.
    “Herriot … I say, Herriot … is that you, Herriot?” The voice was laden with tension.
    “Yes, it is, Lord Hulton.”
    “Oh good … good … dash it, I do apologise. Frightfully bad show, waking you up like this … but I’ve got something damn peculiar here.” A soft pattering followed which I took to be matches falling around the receiver.
    “Really?” I yawned and my eyes closed involuntarily. “In what way, exactly?”
    “Well, I’ve been sitting up with one of my best sows. Been farrowing and produced twelve nice piglets, but there’s something very odd.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Difficult to describe, old chap … but you know the … er … bottom aperture … there’s a bloody great long red thing hanging from it.”
    My eyes snapped open and my mouth gaped in a soundless scream. Prolapsed uterus! Hard labour in cows, a pleasant exercise in ewes, impossible in sows.
    “Long red …! When …? How …?” I was stammering pointlessly. I didn’t have to ask.
    “Just popped it out, dear boy. I was waiting for another piglet and whoops, there it was. Gave me a nasty turn.”
    My toes curled tightly beneath the blankets. It was no good telling him that I had seen five prolapsed uteri in pigs in my limited experience and had failed in every case. I had come to the conclusion that there was no way of putting them back.
    But I had to try. “I’ll be right out,” I muttered.
    I looked at the alarm clock. It was five thirty. A horrible time, truncating the night’s slumber yet eliminating any chance of a soothing return to bed for an hour before the day’s work. And I hated turning out even more since my marriage. Helen was lovely to come back to, but by the same token it was a bigger wrench to leave her soft warm presence and