A Song of Sixpence Read Online Free PDF Page A

perhaps, the cause of that rare event, a surreptitious visit from my cousin Terence, a boy of sixteen, who from his earliest years had been blessed with a nose keenly receptive of the lightest airs of affluency?
    Terence was a cool, long-legged, unusually good-looking fellow, endowed with more than his share of the Carroll charm. His home, which I had never seen, was in Lochbridge, only twelve miles away, where his father owned an establishment curiously named the Lomond Vaults. While I did not then comprehend the implications of that occult word ‘Vaults’ beyond its suggestion of subterranean depths, Terry’s great distinction, enviable in my eyes, was that, he attended the famous Rockcliff College in Dublin as a boarder. At present on his Easter holidays, he rolled up to the front gate on a shining new Rudge Whitworth bicycle. He was wearing well-creased grey flannel trousers, from which he negligently snapped off the clips, the blue Rockcliff blazer and a rakishly tilted straw hat banded with the school colours. An Olympian, straight from Parnassus—the Vaults?—he dazzled me.
    Mother, ardently hospitable and long starved of visitors, was delighted to see Terence, although put out at being caught unprepared.
    â€˜My dear boy, if only you’d let me know you were coming, I’d have had such a nice lunch for you.’ She looked at the clock, which showed twenty minutes to three. ‘Tell me what I can get for you now.’
    â€˜As a matter of fact I’ve had my lunch, Aunt Grace.’ I could see that the term of kinship pleased my mother. ‘Still, I could do with a snack.’
    â€˜Just say what you’d like.’
    â€˜Well, I’m rather partial to a hard-boiled fresh egg, if you have some in the house.’
    â€˜Of course. How many would you like?’
    â€˜Should we say half a dozen. Aunt Grace?’ Terence suggested carelessly.
    Fifteen minutes later he was seated at the table gracefully making contact with six hard-boiled eggs and several slices of thickly buttered cottage loaf, while at the same time recounting to us, in an offhand manner and an accent tinged with the intonation of upper-class Dublin, his notable triumph of the past term, a win in the hundred-yard sprint at the school sports. Impossible not to admire, and we did, although Mother seemed to wilt slightly as for the third time Terence repeated:
    â€˜The way I left them in my final burst they might have been standing still.’
    Indeed, it was she who suggested later on that Terence take me for a short walk, pending the return of my father. As we set off, up the road to the village, I put my hand in his and rapturously burst forth:
    â€˜Oh, Cousin Terry, how I would love to be at Rockcliff with you!’
    Terence looked at me fixedly, then, producing a quill toothpick, began absently to work on his teeth.
    â€˜Don’t mention it to your mater, who’s a doat, but one of these eggs was a trifle off.’
    He burped slightly to emphasize his point.
    â€˜Oh, I’m sorry, Terry. But did you hear what I said about Rockcliff?’
    Terence shook his head indolently, but with a finality that chilled me.
    â€˜My poor little caper, you’d never stand the ferrule. Rockcliff would kill you stone-dead. Good God, what’s that object over there?’
    I spun round. It was Maggie, on one of her slavish errands, with a big bundle of laundry flapping on her head, uncouth, unkempt, and waving to me, waving wildly in friendly recognition. My skin contracted. To acknowledge Maggie before Terence? No, no, it was unthinkable. Guilty of the first of the two great acts of apostasy of my childhood, I turned away.
    â€˜God knows who it is,’ I mumbled, in a feeble imitation of my cousin’s manner, then walked on, leaving Maggie stricken, one arm frozen in mid-air.
    At the head of the road Terence paused outside the grocery store. In the window, on a glass stand, lay one of