I thought Id best give you a ring, Mr. Herriot, Mrs. Broadwith said. She was a comfortable, elderly widow with a square, ruddy face contrasting sharply with the pinched features on the pillow. Hes been coughing right bad this week and this morning he was a bit staggery. Still eats well, though.
I bet he does. I ran my hands over the rolls of fat on the ribs. It would take something really drastic to put old Prince off his grub.
Miss Stubbs laughed from the bed and the old dog, his mouth wide, eyes dancing, seemed to be joining in the joke. I put my stethoscope over his heart and listened, knowing well what I was going to hear. They say the heart is supposed to go Lub-dup, lub-dup, but Princes went swish-swoosh, swish-swoosh. There seemed to be nearly as much blood leaking back as was being pumped into the circulatory system. And another thing, the swish-swoosh was a good bit faster than last time; he was on oral digitalis but it wasnt quite doing its job.
Gloomily I moved the stethoscope over the rest of the chest. Like all old dogs with a chronic heart weakness he had an ever-present bronchitis and I listened without enthusiasm to the symphony of whistles, babbles, squeaks and bubbles which signaled the workings of Princes lungs. The old dog stood very erect and proud, his tail still waving slowly. He always took it as a tremendous compliment when I examined him and there was no doubt he was enjoying himself now. Fortunately his was not a very painful ailment.
Straightening up, I patted his head, and he responded immediately by trying to put his paws on my chest. He didnt quite make it and even that slight exertion started his ribs heaving and his tongue lolling. I gave him an intramuscular injection of digitalin and another of morphine hydrochloride, which he accepted with apparent pleasure as part of the game.
I hope that will steady his heart and breathing, Miss Stubbs. Youll find hell be a bit dopey for the rest of the day and that will help, too. Carry on with the tablets as before, and Im going to leave you some more medicine for his bronchitis.
The next stage of the visit began now as Mrs. Broadwith brought in a cup of tea and the rest of the animals were let out of the kitchen. There were Ben, a Sealyham, and Sally, a cocker spaniel, and they started a deafening barking contest with Prince. They were closely followed by the cats, Arthur and Susie, who stalked in gracefully and began to rub themselves against my trouser legs.
It was the usual scenario for the many cups of tea I had drunk with Miss Stubbs under the little card which dangled above her bed.
How are you today? I asked.
Oh, much better, she replied and immediately, as always, changed the subject.
Mostly she liked to talk about her pets and the ones she had known right back to her girlhood. She spoke a lot, too, about the days when her family were alive. She loved to describe the escapades of her three brothers and today she showed me a photograph which Mrs. Broadwith had found at the bottom of a drawer.
I took it from her and three young men in the knee breeches and little round caps of the eighteen-nineties smiled up at me from the yellowed old print; they all held long church warden pipes and the impish humor in their expressions came down undimmed over the years.
My word, they look really bright lads, Miss Stubbs, I said.
Oh, they were young rips! she exclaimed. She threw back her head and laughed and for a moment her face was radiant, transfigured by her memories.
The things I had heard in the village came back to me; about the prosperous father and his family who lived in the big house many years ago. Then the foreign investments which crashed and the sudden change in circumstances. When towd feller died he was about skint, one old man had said. Theres not much brass there now.
Probably just enough brass to keep Miss Stubbs and her animals alive and to pay Mrs. Broadwith. Not enough to keep the garden dug or the house painted or for any of the normal little luxuries.
And, sitting there, drinking my tea, with the dogs in a row by the bedside and the cats making themselves comfortable on the bed itself, I felt as I had often felt beforea bit afraid of the responsibility I had. The one thing which brought some light into the life of the brave old woman was the transparent devotion of this shaggy bunch whose eyes were never far from her face. And the snag was that they were all elderly.
There had, in fact, been four dogs originally, but one of them, a truly ancient yellow Labrador, had died a few months previously. And now I had the rest of them to look after and none of them less than ten years old.
They were perky enough but all showing some of the signs of old age; Prince with his heart, Sally beginning to drink a lot of water which made me wonder if her kidneys were giving trouble; Ben growing steadily thinner with his nephritis. I couldnt give him new kidneys and I hadnt much faith in the tablets I had prescribed. Another peculiar thing about Ben was that I was always having to clip his claws; they grew at an extraordinary rate.