A Boy of Good Breeding Read Online Free PDF

north-south, one of them being Main Street, and ten short avenues running perpendicular to the streets. It was possible to walk anywhere in town in less than fifteen minutes, but Hosea almost always drove.
    Driving down First Street towards Hospital Avenue, Hosea continued to think about Lorna. She had been his girlfriend for about three and a half years. About the same length of time it had been since Euphemia Funk had died. They had met at an auctioneers’ convention in Denver. Auctioneering had been another thing Hosea was involved in, following Euphemia’s death, but had since abandoned. For a guy who had trouble finding the right words to say hello, auctioneering wasn’t the best hobby. Lorna had been wearing a name tag that had said, “Hi, my name’s …” then nothing—she hadn’t filled it in and Hosea was smitten by her for this reason. He looked at everybody else’s properly filled-out name tags and thought how ridiculous they all were. And his, too, Hosea Funk, how absurd. Who was this mysterious Mona Lisa with the blank name tag, anyway?
    Throughout the convention, Hosea stumbled about hoping to catch a glimpse of her, tugging fiendishly at his shirts and notgiving a hoot about cattle calls or estate auctioneering protocol. He had been forty-nine at the time, but he felt like a sixteen-year-old-kid, creating impossible scenarios in his mind whereby he could prove himself worthy of this mysterious woman with the blank name tag.
    On the plane home from the convention he had all but given up, when, to his amazement, he saw her stroll down the aisle towards him. She had stuck out her perfect hand and introduced herself. Lorna Garden. It turned out she lived in Winnipeg, was divorced with no children, worked as a medical secretary, and dabbled in auctioneering. The name-tag thing had been an oversight on her part. But Hosea was in love and Lorna thought he wasn’t too bad and the rest is history.
    “And my relationship with her may be history, too,” thought Hosea, “if I don’t get my act together.”
    Hosea couldn’t make up his mind, it seemed. Did he want her to move out to Algren and live with him or not? He knew Lorna wanted to, but now, with Hosea’s hemming and hawing, Lorna was starting to play it cool. “Whatever,” she’d said the last time they’d talked about it. Hosea hated that word. Whatever. All through his childhood on the Funk farm and then in town living with his mother he had heard it being used, oh, almost daily. Whatever, Euphemia would say if Hosea asked if he could have ten cents. Whatever, she’d say if he told her the U.S. had invaded Korea.
    It wasn’t a question of damaging his public reputation, having Lorna live with him. The townspeople of Algren would have been happy for Hosea to have a woman living with him. And it wasn’t a question of room or money. Hosea had enough of both. And it certainly wasn’t a question of wavering commitment. He loved Lorna with all his heart. It was just … well, would she have been one person too many for Algren? For Algren’s status as Canada’s smallest town.
    And soon Lorna might just give up on him, thought Hosea as he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. But what could he do?
    Hosea focused on the task at hand. He had a question to ask Veronica Epp—just one and he’d leave her alone. Veronica Epp was expecting her fifth child. This fact alone irked Hosea. But now there was some talk around town that she was expecting twins. If she had two babies instead of one, which he had figured on, Hosea would have to do some fancy footwork.
    “Good morning, Jean Bonsoir,” said Hosea, with one slight tug at his front, to the hospital’s only doctor, an import from Quebec. His name was Jean François, but Hosea like to think his alternative pronunciation was funny and helped to break the ice.
    “Hosea,” the doctor returned with a nod. He was counting the days until he could leave Algren for Montreal, where he could do