Script phrase and ribbon on ankle

The novice you asked after has lasted three weeks, which Brother Edmund says is two more than the last one managed. He came to us from a bank in Leeds with soft hands and a good pair of boots, and on his first morning he was sent to the lambing shed with a lantern and a bucket. He came back grey. I thought that would be the end of him, but the next night he went out again without being asked.

Some of it is the shed, and some is the infirmary. Brother Edmund keeps the lancet and the stitching thread, and I have watched him teach the boy how to hold a ewe still without hurting her. The boy carries a strip of lavender ribbon in his pocket, the kind the women in the village tie to the church railings each spring for the sick. He won't say whose it was. Whenever he is frightened he smooths it flat between his fingers, and then he goes back to work.

Last Thursday a ewe came down with a twisted lamb and no strength left in her. Edmund asked him to hold the lamp steady while he worked, and I watched the boy keep his eyes on the light, not the blood, the whole time. When the lamb took its first breath he sat down in the straw and laughed like a fool.

I wrote the words on a card and pinned it above the cheese press, where he will see it when he is tired: it takes guts. I do not think he needs telling. Still, I hope you will pray for him, Ada, because he is doing the hard part well.

Yours in Christ, Brother Anselm