A Nurse's Duty Read Free

tell me. Tell me how he went to the foreign war and while he was away it growed and growed and growed –’
    ‘Will you two go to sleep?’ demanded Gran from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Mind, if I hear another peep out of you I won’t take you back with me the morn.’
    The threat was enough for both of them and they soon settled down to sleep and this time Karen’s fears were unfounded for she didn’t even wake when Jemima came to bed.
    Karen’s heart sang as she turned down the track to Low Rigg Farm and saw the rowan tree standing by the gate. It always came into view first and she watched out for it. She breathed deeply of the moorland air. It was so fresh and tangy, not like the air in Morton Main which was thick with the smell of the cokeworks, sulphurous and heavy and overlaid with the stink of the middens lining every back row. Even the muck heap by the barn smelled better than that, she decided.
    ‘The rowan berries will soon be ready. You can help me make jelly,’ said Gran. ‘You can pick the wild raspberries in the ghyllie an’ all. Oh, aye, you two are going to be a grand help to me.’
    And they were. They picked pounds and pounds of the wild fruit and helped Albert, the orphan boy from Durham, look after Posy the cow and Daisy the Dales pony.
    ‘Daisy’s not a bit like a pit pony,’ said Joe, searching in his pocket for the crust he had secreted from breakfast. He found it at last and held it out to her, and though there were bits of fluff stuck to it she didn’t turn her nose up at it but delicately took it from his fingers and munched contentedly.
    ‘Well, she’s too big for the pits anyroad, she’s bred to work on the fell,’ said Albert. He was a big-boned lad of about fifteen and already he was putting on the stature of a man. Joe idolized him and followed him about all day. ‘I’m going up the high moor to check on the sheep later on,’ Albert went on. ‘Does you want to come?’
    ‘Eeh, yes, Albert, that I do,’ cried Joe, his eyes lighting up.
    ‘Right then, better ask your gran.’
    Joe raced into the kitchen where Karen was kneeling on a stool by the table helping Gran roll out suet pastry for the pot pie which they were going to have for dinner.
    ‘Can I go up the high moor with Albert later on? Can I, Gran?’ he asked, his brow knitted in anxiety in case she said no. But Gran nodded.
    ‘You can both go, Karen an’ all. It’ll do you good, blow the cobwebs away. You can take some sandwiches and a bottle of water for a picnic tea.’
    After dinner they set out, Karen carrying the basket and the two boys with crooks, Joe’s almost twice his height. But he carefully watched Albert and tried to hold his crook just the same way though more than once he stumbled and almost tripped himself up with the unwieldy stick. But Karen was lost to everything but the moor stretching away above and below and all around them, for miles and miles. She watched the sheep skipping away at their approach, the lambs almost as big as the ewes now it was August. She laughed aloud at the cock pheasant which started up almost under her feet with a flash of rainbow colours, and the hen birds, dowdy and fluttering, in the brilliant purple of the heather.
    They reached a good spot for a picnic and Albert went off to check on the sheep which didn’t take him long for Gran’s stint on the moor didn’t allow for many animals. And then they settled down to their picnic though it was little more than two hours since they had eaten the pot pie. Karen gazed about her, looking for the lone curlew which was calling out persistently but she didn’t see it until Joe pointed it out. It must have some chicks close by, she thought. Its cry was so plaintive yet so throbbingly beautiful, it made her heart ache somehow.
    ‘I wish we lived here all the time,’ she sighed, and Joe looked surprised.
    ‘But you’d want Mam and Da, wouldn’t you?’
    For a moment, Karen’s happiness dimmed as she thought about