Thomasina. Paul Gallico

and Inveranoch.

      Yet he dawdled with his driving, hunched about the wheel, dwarfing it with his great bulk since he was in no hurry to get back. For all there was to and about his work and profession, this was the part he liked best, poking about in the rugged hill country above the loch, visiting the farms and practising a medicine that was almost human medicine in that it was designed to aid in the protection of human beings, and where the beasts he was called upon to treat were doughty bread-winners and servants of man, from the clever, bright-eyed sheepdogs to the black-faced sheep they herded and the stalwart hardy breeds of Highland cattle.

      Here too, he was received almost with the same respect as Dr Strathsay who came out likewise to the back country to deliver their children, set their fractures, or treat occasional illnesses. To the crofter who lived by his sheep, pigs, fowl, or cattle, Mr MacDhui was a man of importance. A person could well recover from a sneeze or feverish cough, a hand or foot cut with axe or scythe, but a dead animal that could not even be sold for meat was money out of pocket, and an infection which might condemn an entire herd to slaughter was a catastrophe. To them Mr MacDhui was a man of value and in most quarters he was treated with deference.

      Thus it was with reluctance that the veterinary found himself again in Inveranoch where his office/waiting-room would no doubt be filled once more with both locals as well as visitors from as far off as Liverpool, Birmingham and London with their useless and pampered pets.

      It was a quarter past eleven when he drove the jeep around to the back and, entering the premises from the rear, turned his bag over to Willie Bannock along with a quick account of the morning’s doings back in the hills, washed his hands, still talking and giving his assistant no chance to speak, and donning a fresh white coat, made his usual entrance, beard out-thrust into the doorway of the waiting-room.

      He noted that as usual every bench and chair was occupied, the locals in their sober clothes, overalls, or work aprons, the city dwellers more flamboyantly clad, including a lady in a most grand and fashionable hat holding a chocolate-coloured Pomeranian with rheumy eyes. And, as always, the sight inspired the same choler and truculent impatience it seemed to bring on every day at this hour. He hated them and he hated his work.

      Yet he looked them over and looked again and this time became aware of a startling presence amongst the group of waiting clients. Seated quietly and most upright on the edge of the last chair at the far end of the room, the very last in line was his daughter Mary Ruadh.

      MacDhui coloured red at this challenging evidence of disobedience, for the child was under strict orders, and Mrs McKenzie knew it too, that she was never to come next door to the surgery, hospital, or consulting-room as many of the diseases suffered by animal patients were likewise infectious and communicable to man. One such tragedy in his life had been sufficient.

      As he stared with rising anger, he noted that what had seemed to be an extension of her red-gold hair tumbling down her shoulder was her ginger cat held in her arms close to her breast, its head cuddled under her chin in the manner of a child. Before he could enquire sharply as to what kind of play or nonsense this was, and in direct contravention to his orders, Willie Bannock was at his elbow whispering: “The puir puss has some unco ailment. It can walk nae mair. The chiel has been biding anxiously for your return.”

      Mr MacDhui said – “You know as well as I she is not to come here. Well, since she is here then she must await her turn like the rest.” To the woman seated nearest the door he said – “If you will take your dog inside now, Mrs Kechnie, we’ll have a look at those ears,” when a great noise and hubbub was heard without in the street, approaching nearer and a moment later the door swung open and it burst in upon them.

      It revealed itself to be composed of small children in various stages of excitement, housewives from neighbouring cottages wiping their hands on their aprons, several men, likewise attracted by the noise, and at its centre the minister, Mr Angus Peddie, old Tammas Moffat, the blind man who was licensed to sell pencils and shoe-laces at the corner of High and Fore Streets, and Constable MacQuarrie. In the constable’s arms, muddied and bloodied, still in his harness with the guide handle, lay the quivering form of Bruce, the Seeing Eye dog that had been provided for Tammas through subscription by the parish at the instigation of Mr Peddie.

      The noise caught Mr MacDhui as he was closing the door and he returned quickly – “Now, now – what’s all this? I’ll have no crowding in here. Come now, out with you, all of you who have no business here, everyone except Mr Peddie, Tammas and the policeman. Angus, what has happened?”

      “Run over, sir,” the constable replied in place of the pastor, who busied himself clearing the followers-on out of the room. “It happened only a few moments ago, one of the visitors speeding. We’ll have him under lock and key in short order, but in the meantime, I’m afraid the dog’s done for. Both wheels went over him. We brought him here as quickly as we could.”

      Mr Peddie returned fluttering anxiously. “He’s still living, Andrew. Perhaps you can do something –”

      The old blind man was in a state, his knees trembling and his head shaking from side to side, stunned by the accident, lost without his dog, bewildered by the people about. He moaned – “Where is he, my Bruce? Where is he? We were about to cross the street. I heard a noise and a shout. Where is he? Is he dead? What will I do? What will happen to me?”

      Mr Peddie took him by the arm. “Gently now, Tammas. The dog is still alive and in good hands. Mr MacDhui will do the best he can for him.”

      The blind man groped for an instant and then quavered – “Mr MacDhui? Mr MacDhui? Is that where we are?”

      “Take the dog inside,” Mr MacDhui ordered Willie Bannock, who carefully relieved the policeman of his quivering burden. The veterinary glanced at the dog as it went by and wrinkled his nose; the life seemed all but crushed out of it.

      “Is it Mr MacDhui?” the blind man said again, and turning his sightless face to him, put out his hand, touched and held his arm. “I’m an old man. I cannot be doing without him. Save my eyes for me, Mr MacDhui –”

      The plea went into the bowels of Mr Veterinary Surgeon Andrew MacDhui like a knife thrust and turned there, for with three words – “Save my eyes” – the blind man had brought back again all of the frustration and failure of his forty-odd years of living. MacDhui would have given the next forty to have heard those words spoken to him as a doctor of medicine, to have been called upon to give of his skill, love and devotion to the saving of human sight, or health, or life itself, instead of being asked to put together again, like Humpty-Dumpty, the fragments of a dog.

      Something of what was passing through his mind communicated itself to his friend Mr Peddie, either because of the tortured misery the minister thought he glimpsed at that moment in the face of the animal doctor, or because he himself was so well acquainted with MacDhui’s story since they had known one another since their schoolboy and student days in Glasgow.

      It was to the young Peddie that the boy MacDhui had confided his ambition to become a great physician just about the time that the former had decided for the ministry and they had argued and discussed the respective merits of their chosen professions then, boasted, bickered and let their ambitions soar.

      And it was only Peddie, the young divinity student, who saw fall the tears of grief, rage and frustration when the tyrannical father cut short his boy’s hopes and ambitions and compelled him to follow in his own profession of animal medicine.

      “He means –” Mr Peddie began, but MacDhui quelled him with a look.

      “I know what he means,” he said. “The dog is three-quarters dead and ought to be put out of his misery, but – I’ll save Tammas’s eyes if I can.” Then to all of those in the waiting-room he shouted – “Go home. Come back tomorrow. I have no time for you now.”

      One by one they picked up their pets and filed out. MacDhui said to Peddie – “There’s no use your waiting. It will be some time before I can tell. Get Tammas home. I’ll let you know –” He went into the surgery and closed the door behind him.

      The constable led the