My Insect Queen, by the Author of 'Margaret's Engagement'

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. FIE UPON ME The day before that on which the grand histrionic display, as Major Graysbrooke magniloquently styled it, was to come off, it had set in a bitter black frost, which coming suddenly upon some days of heavy rain, made the roads as slippery as glass, and promised us surgeons a...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. FIE UPON ME The day before that on which the grand histrionic display, as Major Graysbrooke magniloquently styled it, was to come off, it had set in a bitter black frost, which coming suddenly upon some days of heavy rain, made the roads as slippery as glass, and promised us surgeons a mournful harvest of broken limbs. I thought it not unlikely that I might furnish the harvest, instead of reaping it, as I rode slowly on my jaded horse down the Long Mynd, when I was returning late in the evening from attendance on a patient, six miles off. She was all right at present, at any rate.My mind was perfectly at ease on her account, but not at all on my own. In the first place, my horse was knocked up. Of the three of which my modest stud consisted, Roland had taken 'one to Lingford that afternoon, the other was lame, and unfit for work, and the one I now rode was scarcely fitter, for my Assistant had ridden him some fifty or sixty miles within the last two days, and he was done for. My Assistant cost me a great deal in the wear and tear of horses; not that he was cruel or inconsiderate in his treatment of them. I do not think he would have overtasked one of them for his own pleasure; but in his views of duty he was harsh and uncompromising, and did not exempt the brute creation from their share in the world's great work and suffering. When the demands on his time were urgent ?when some sufferer lay waiting for relief ?Roland would ride like the very devil, paying very little heed to the ease or comfort with which the animal he bestrode would perform the journey?and quite as little, I must say, to his own. The number of horse-shoes he wore out was something terrific If I offered a mild remonstrance, it was totally disregarded. If you will keep more hors...