Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/229



FEW days later Margaret Cameron came to Jamie with a pair of jackets that she had fashioned from unbleached muslin. A broad band fitted neatly around his chest and fastened with flat buttons. A pair of straps, easy when sitting, sufficiently close fitting to keep the bandages in place when moving around, crossed the shoulders. When his wound was dressed and he slipped on one of these contrivances and buttoned it, he felt like a man who had just been redeemed. The bandage was so much lighter in weight, so much easier to wear than what he had carried for two years. Above all, it served his purpose and did not constantly remind him by its weight and the ceaseless chafing across his shoulders and under his arms of the fact that it was there.

For a week he and Margaret worked together, “fixing their fences,” they called it. They planned the best time of day to do the sprinkling. To the extent of the knowledge of either of them, they watched over the bees. As slowly and easily as possible Jamie went about everything that week. He kept religiously to the diet that they were working out, and every morning at ten o’clock he put on the Master’s bathing suit, and armed with an old blanket