Chapter 1 #2
Lydia looked around in bewilderment. She was familiar with the hymn but the person singing it, obviously a male based on the low notes, did not have a good voice.
“That saved a wretch like me!”
The girl rose from her feet and walked swiftly toward the singing, which was in the direction of the new barn. Lydia knew the structure had only recently been erected for the Collins’ livestock.
“I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
Her nose wrinkled as she approached the barn from a most obnoxious smell, which added to the unpleasantness of the poor singing, but her curiosity drove her on.
She turned the corner and found herself staring into an outdoor pen which was shaded by a spreading elm tree.
Inside the pen was a colossal pink sow, and attached to the sow were ten piglets, all drinking milk raptly from the teats of their enormous mother.
Mr. Collins, Charlotte’s husband, was standing in a corner of the odiferous pen, singing badly, but he stopped when he observed Lydia.
“Ah, Miss Lydia! Do you sing?”
Her mouth dropped open briefly before she managed to sputter out a reply, “Er, yes, a little? Not as well as Lizzy ...”
“Far better than me, I am certain. Please do sing, Miss Lydia. Petunia likes it when we sing to her, and I must focus on closing her wounds. The beast was injured when a barrier inside fell over and cut her.”
Lydia stared at the man in bewilderment before dropping her gaze to the sow. The large animal had three gaping cuts along her back. How dreadful!
Hesitatingly at first, and then with increased enthusiasm, she began singing ‘Greensleeves’ to the pig.
Mr. Collins stepped inside the barn and quickly reappeared with a needle and thread.
He pulled over a convenient stool, sat down, and began carefully stitching one of the wounds.
Lydia ran out of verses to ‘Greensleeves’ before he was finished so she switched to another popular ballad while Mr. Collins darted in and out of the barn with two more sets of needle and thread, which he used to sew the other wounds shut.
“Thank you very much,” the man finally said, beaming. “You have been enormously helpful. Petunia obviously appreciated her songstress given how quietly she submitted to my medical care. Give me a moment, and I will join you.”
Lydia nodded, still shocked by the scene, and waited until her friend’s husband joined her. She almost immediately regretted that decision as Mr. Collins was exceedingly smelly.
“I am going to go jump in the stream, Miss Lydia,” the man said cheerfully, striding away from the barn.
“Jump into the stream?’
“Yes, I have a great deal of pig excrement on my person and would like to wash it away.”
“Cannot the servants clean your clothing?”
The stream was located very near the barn and as Lydia watched, the parson waded directly into the brook and sat down so that the water came up to his neck.
“It makes far less work for the servants if I wash myself off first in this manner,” the clergyman explained. “They have enough work without dealing with my thoroughly filthy clothing.
Lydia considered this with wonder. She had never even considered how her own dirty clothing would affect the servants. Why should it matter? They were there to serve, were they not?
Mr. Collins clambered out, water streaming off his loose clothing and walked toward the bench under the oak tree.
“I am going to sit outside in the sun to dry off a bit before entering the parsonage,” he declared. “It will reduce the drips on the floor. Do not feel you must wait outside with me, Miss Lydia.
The girl hesitated for a moment but then sat down at the extreme end of the bench where she would not be in danger of getting wet. She was not ready to go indoors and be subjected to yelling babies.
“How did you learn to stitch close wounds?” she inquired. “It seems quite extraordinary for a clergyman!”
“A very good question,” Mr. Collins replied in a judicious tone.
“The truth is that animal husbandry inevitably requires some attention to the illness and injuries of the beasts in our care. I have taken the time to read books and learn from other local men who work with animals on a regular basis. I am also conducting a scientific experiment.”
“What kind of experiment?”
“I am studying the use of different kinds of materials to stitch up wounds. Did you notice that the strands were not all the same color?”
Lydia frowned at this, thinking back, “Oh yes! One was black and the other two were yellow.”
“Precisely,” Mr. Collins replied enthusiastically. “The black thread is actually horse hair, from the tail of a horse.”
“How strange! Why would you use something so odd when you can use normal thread, Mr. Collins?”
“Again, a most excellent question! First, cotton thread does not work in stitching wounds; it breaks down too quickly. Most doctors use silk thread if it is available. However, there have been reports in scientific literature that horsehair usually results in less infection than silk thread.”
The girl tilted her head in surprise, “Why would the type of thread be important?”
“I wondered that too. The fibers themselves are different, of course; horsehair is grown from a horse and silk from silkworms, but it occurred to me to wonder if the processing is important.”
“Processing?”
“Yes. The horsehair is boiled to make it more pliable. It is possible that perhaps it is the boiling process which is helping in some way.”
“I do not understand how merely boiling thread would ... would make a pig heal better!”
“That is why I am doing the experiment! The horsehair was boiled because it must be to make it pliable. One silk thread has been boiled and the other has not. I will study the wounds to see if they heal similarly. Of course, it is not a perfect experiment; the wounds are not identical. However, the alternative is to deliberately cut the animal to create wounds, and that would not be right.”
“No indeed,” Lydia agreed, shuddering slightly.
“So we will see,” the clergyman finished brightly.
Lydia mulled this over thoughtfully, “The thread is not hot when you use it, correct?”
“No, I let it cool down to normal temperatures.”
“It should not affect the healing of the wounds then,” Lydia declared in frustration. “How could it?”
“Many things are altered by being heated, are they not?” her companion inquired reasonably. “Bread dough becomes bread, for example. Raw meat changes into a far more palatable form for eating, even after it cools, and so on.”
“That is true. I admit I had not really thought about it before.”
“The world is full of amazing things, Miss Lydia,” the brilliant rector commented, gazing around in wonder. “It is a privilege when we are able to understand some small part of it better. And now I believe I have dried enough to enter the house, and I am quite ready for tea.”
Lydia rose to her feet and followed the man into the parsonage, her mind whirling busily. How odd to think about heat and its effect on food and horsehair and silk ...