....I needed the girl to be gone. "I want you to go to the Herbalist's. Get yarrow." I said. "I have yarrow in my own garden! Right beside the door!" Jean replied.
I didn't need yarrow, not really. I needed her gone. I had to think quickly. "Spearmint? Lemon balm? Catnip? Do you have all of those?"
She shook her head. "No catnip. If cats were attracted to my garden, the dog would make a terrible fuss.
"Wouldn't you you poor thing?" She said sweetly, leaning down to murmur to the dying mother dog. She stroked the dogs back but it did not lift its head. I saw that its eyes were beginning to glaze.
"Go," I told her in my most urgent voice. "Get those things."
"Do you think they'll help?" Jean asked dubiously. She took her hand from the dog and stood, but she lingered.
"Just go!" I ordered.
"You needn't use a rude tone, Matty," Jean told me with an edge in her voice. But she turned with a flounce of her skirt and went. I barely heard the sound of the door closing behind her. Steeling myself against the painful vibrating shock that I knew would go through my entire body, I placed my left hand on the mother dog, my right hand on the puppy, and I willed them to live.
A mother dog and her puppy!
No comments:
Post a Comment