Scotch Eggs from An Echo in the Bone
I put down my cup and stared at him.
“You don’t mean you aren’t planning to go ho-to go back to the Ridge?” I had a sudden empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, remembering our plans for the New House, the smell of balsam fir, and the quiet of the mountains. Did he really mean to move to Boston or Philadelphia?
“No,” he said, surprised. “Of course we shall go back there. But if I mean to be in the printing trade, Sassenach, we shall need to be in a city for a time, no? Only ’til the war is over,” he said, encouraging.
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. “Yes. Of course.” I drank tea, not tasting it. How could I have been so stupid? I had never once thought that, of course, a printing press would be pointless on Fraser’s Ridge. In part, I supposed, I simply hadn’t really believed he would get his press back, let alone thought ahead to the logical conclusion if he did.
But now he had his Bonnie back, and the future had suddenly acquired a disagreeable solidity. Not that cities didn’t have considerable advantages, I told myself stoutly. I could finally acquire a decent set of medical instruments, replenish my medicines — why, I could even make penicillin and ether again! With a little better appetite, I took a Scotch egg.
Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone (Chapter 74 – Twenty-Twenty)
