Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/185

 for a year and she says her flesh is so hard and her muscles work so fine, and her brain functions better and she doesn’t know she has a stomach. She thinks it’s wonderful. What I am going to do is to make a point of seeing her and get her to write out the combinations and then I am going to try them on myself and I can try them on you at the same time. And on your own hook you can try the sand and sunshine and the salt water and the sea fog and the tomato and oranges and we’ll see how we come out.”

“At any rate,” said Jamie, “it will be more interesting to put in time planning a fight to live than to spend months moping around figuring on how soon I am going to die. In the meantime, if you would be so good as to fix up that arrangement you talked about for bandaging, I’d be very grateful. If I could get out of the weight of all this harness, I’d almost feel as if I’d been redeemed spiritually as well as physically.”

So Margaret went home to bring her sewing basket and her measuring tape, and Jamie sat on a chair while she took his measurement for the length and width the bandages need be and figured on the shoulder straps to support them. Then Jamie returned to his work.

At exactly ten o’clock he came up the back walk and selected two of the biggest, ripest tomatoes he could see on the Bee Master’s vines. He carried them to the kitchen and worked the juice from them through a small round sieve he found hanging on the wall, and when he had a tumbler overflowing, he lifted it and drank it with the keenest relish.