Legend of the Seventh Virgin Read Online Free Page B

where animals were concerned. He would cure their sickness with Granny’s herbs and if any of his charges needed something he would help himself from her store as though the needs of animals were more important than anything else.
    His gift for curing was a part of my dream. I saw him in a fine house like Dr. Hilliard’s, for doctors in St. Larnston were respected; and if people thought more highly of Granny Bee’s remedies, they wouldn’t bob a curtsy or pull a forelock for her; in spite of her wisdom she lived in a one-roomed cottage, whereas Dr. Hilliard was gentry. I was determined to raise Joe up with me; and I wanted the rank of doctor for him almost as passionately as I wanted that of a lady for myself.
    “And when it’s mended?” I asked.
    “Well then he’ll fly away and feed himself.”
    “And what’ll you get for your pains?”
    He didn’t take any notice. He was murmuring to his pigeon. If he had heard me he would have wrinkled his brow, wondering what he should get beyond the joy of having made a maimed creature whole.
    The storehouse had always excited me, because I had never seen anything like it before. There were benches on each side and these were laden with pots and bottles; there was a beam across the ceiling and attached to this were different kinds of herbs which had been hung up to dry. I stood still for a second or so sniffing that odor which I had never smelt anywhere else. There was a fireplace and a huge blackened cauldron; and beneath the benches were jars of Granny’s brews. I knew the one containing sloe gin and I poured some into a glass and carried it back through the cottage and out to her.
    I sat down beside her while she sipped.
    “Granny,” I said, “tell me if I’ll ever get what I want.”
    She turned to me, smiling. “Why, lovey,” she said, “you talk like one of these girls who come to me to ask me if their lovers will be true. I don’t expect it of ’ee, Kerensa.”
    “But I want to know.”
    “Then listen to me. The answer’s simple. Clever ones don’t want the future told. They make it.”

    We could hear the shots all through the day. It meant that there was a house party at the Abbas; we had seen the carriages arriving and we knew what it was, because it happened at this time every year. They were shooting pheasants in the woods.
    Joe was up on the talfat with a dog which he had found a week before when it was starving. It was just beginning to be strong enough to run about; but it never left Joe’s side. He shared his food with it and it had kept him happy since he had found it. But he was restless now. I remembered how he had been the year before and I knew that he was thinking of the poor frightened birds fluttering up before falling dead on the ground.
    He had banged his fist on the table when he had talked of it and said: “It’s the wounded ones I be thinking of. If they’m dead, there’s nothing ’ee can do, but it’s the wounded ones. They don’t always find ’em and …”
    I said: “Joe, you’ve got to be sensible. Don’t do no good worrying about what can’t be helped.”
    He agreed; but he didn’t go out; he just stayed on the talfat with his dog whom he called Squab because he found it the day the pigeon whose leg he had mended, flew away and it took the place of the bird.
    He worried me because he looked so angry and I was beginning to recognize in Joe something of myself. Therefore I was never sure what he would do. I’d told him often that he was lucky to be able to roam around looking for sick animals; most boys of his age were working in the Fedder mine. People couldn’t think why he wasn’t sent to work there; but I knew Granny shared my ambitions for him — for us both — and while there was enough for us to eat we had our freedom. It was her way of showing them that there was something special about us.
    Granny knew I was worried, so she said I was to go into the woods with her and gather herbs.
    I was glad to get