At Home in Mitford

PENGUIN BOOKS
AT HOME IN MITFORD

Jan Karon is the author of nine Mitford novels:
At Home in Mitford; A Light in the Window; These High, Green Hills; Out to Canaan; A New Song; A Common Life; In This Mountain; Shepherds Abiding;
and
Light from Heaven,
all available from Penguin. She is also the author of
The Mitford Bedside Companion;Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader; A Continual Feast; Patches of Godlight; The Mitford Snowmen: A Christmas Story; Esther’s Gift;
and
The Trellis and the Seed
. Her children’s books include
Miss Fannie’s Hat; Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny; Violet Comes to Stay;
and
Violet Goes to the Country.

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the United States of America by Lion Publishing, 1994
Published in Penguin Books 1996
This large print edition published 2008

Copyright © Jan Karon, 1994

All rights reserved

PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Karon, Jan, 1937-
At home in Mitford/Jan Karon.
p. cm.—(The Mitford years)

ISBN: 978-1-4406-2996-9

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

For Candace Freeland,
my daughter and friend

Warm thanks to Father James Harris, who inspired and encouraged me; to Jerry Burns, who published this book serially in the best of the small-town newspapers, the
Blowing Rocket;
to my doctor, Charles (Bunky) Davant, III, who also doctors all of Mitford; to Bonnie Setzer, Mary Richardson, and Helen Vennard for their support; to my daughter, who laughed in all the right places; to Mary Tarr and the ladies of our volunteer library; to our local police department; and to everyone who buys this book about a small town that does more than exist in the imagination—it really is out there.

He left the coffee-scented warmth of the Main Street Grill and stood for a moment under the green awning.

The honest cold of an early mountain spring stung him sharply.

He often noted the minor miracle of passing through a door into a completely different world, with different smells and attractions. It helped to be aware of the little things in life, he told himself, and he often exhorted his congregation to do the same.

As he headed toward the church office two blocks away, he was delighted to discover that he wasn’t walking, at all. He was ambling.

It was a pleasure he seldom allowed himself. After all, it might appear that he had nothing else to do, when in truth he always had something to do.

He decided to surrender himself to the stolen joy of it, as some might eat half a box of chocolates at one sitting, without remorse.

He arrived at the office, uttering the prayer he had offered at its door every morning for twelve years: “Father, make me a blessing to someone today, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

As he took the key from his pocket, he felt something warm and disgustingly wet on his hand.

He looked down into the face of a large, black, mud-caked dog, whose tail began to beat wildly against his pant leg.

“Good grief!” he said, wiping his hand on his windbreaker.

At that, the dog leaped up and licked his face, sending a shower of saliva into his right ear.

“Get away! Be gone!” he shouted. He tried to protect the notebook he was carrying, but the dog gave it a proper licking before he could stuff it in his jacket, then tried to snatch it from him.

He thought of running, but if anyone saw him fleeing before a shaggy, mud-caked dog, everybody in town would know it within the half hour.

“Down!” he commanded sharply, at which the dog leaped up and gave his chin a bath.

He tried to fend the animal off with his elbow, while inserting the key in the office door. If he were a cussing man, he reasoned, this would offer a premier opportunity to indulge himself.

“ ‘Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth,’ ” he quoted in a loud voice from Ephesians, “ ‘but that which is good to the use of edifying ...’” Suddenly, the dog sat down and looked at his prey with fond admiration.

“Well, now,” he said irritably, wiping the notebook on his sleeve. “I hope you’ve got that nonsense out of your system.” At this, the dog leaped up, stood on its hind legs, and put its vast paws on the rector’s shoulders.

“Father Tim! Father Tim!” It was his part-time secretary, Emma Garrett.

He stood helpless, his glasses fogged with a typhoon of moist exhalations.

Whop!
Emma laid a blow to the dog’s head with her pocketbook. Then,
blam,
she hit him again on the rear flank.

“And don’t come back!” she shouted, as the yelping dog fled into a hedge of rhododendron and disappeared.