Anne Douglas Read Online Free PDF Page A

her aching heart. Instinctively, she turned away from the windows of the house so that she would not be seen and, still holding her heart, moved across the drive to a bench under a tree, where she suddenly began to cry.
    Oh, wasn’t it the last thing she should be doing? Crying, so that when she went back into the house, everyone would see her reddened eyes and Archie Smith would probably shout something about it, and Julia would make remarks. But she couldn’t stop, and didn’t even have a hankie in the pocket of her new cardigan. How strange it was, to be sitting in this lovely garden and to feel so bad! Or, maybe not so strange, after all, for she had reason enough to feel as she did. Which didn’t make her feel any better.
    ‘Hallo,’ a voice suddenly said, breaking into her desolation. ‘This won’t do, will it? There’s no crying allowed, you know, in this garden.’
    Through her mist of tears, she made out a young man standing before her. He was tall and thin, wearing a light jacket and flannels. He had dark brown hair, very thick and very unruly. His eyes were a vivid blue and his smile so friendly, her tears started up again and began to run down her cheeks, at which he passed her a large linen handkerchief. Coming to sit next to her on the bench, he watched her wipe her eyes but shook his head when she tried to return the handkerchief.
    ‘No, you keep that. But tell me what’s wrong, won’t you? Can’t be so bad to need all these tears.’
    She looked away, dabbing again at her eyes. ‘It’s my first day here,’ she whispered. ‘I’m missing home.’
    ‘Ah, I know what that’s like. Went through all that at boarding school. Blubbed my head off.’
    ‘But you weren’t the only new one, eh?’
    ‘No, but some of us minded more than others – leaving home, I mean.’
    ‘Were your folks still at home when you went back for the holidays?’
    ‘Only my father. My mother died when I was small.’
    Shona stared intently into his pleasantly open face. ‘So’s my mother dead,’ she said at last. ‘She died of the Spanish Influenza. And my dad never came back from the war.’
    The young man lowered his bright gaze. ‘That’s hard,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s very hard. Listen, what’s your name, then?’
    ‘Shona Murray. I come from the Dean Village.’
    ‘I’m Mark Lindsay. I live not far from here. My dad’s the doctor for the orphanage.’
    ‘Are you a doctor, too, then?’
    ‘Me?’ He smiled. ‘No, I’m just a medical student – got back to studying after the war. Dad said I could come along to see one of his patients here, but then he told me to wait for him while he had a word with the lady in charge.’
    ‘Miss Bryce.’
    ‘That’s the one. I’ve been looking round the gardens because I like gardens and this is a good one.’
    He suddenly stood up and extending a hand to Shona pulled her up, too. ‘Would you like me to show you something that I’m sure will cheer you up?’
    She looked around, hesitating. ‘I think maybe I should go back to the house. I’m no’ even supposed to be out here.’
    ‘Come on, won’t take a minute.’
    Giving in to the curiosity that seemed to have stemmed her tears, she followed him from the bench to another corner of the garden well away from the house. And stopped, staring in wonder at one of the strangest trees she had ever seen.
    It was quite tall and beautifully shaped, its branches fanning out from a slender trunk as regularly as from a Christmas tree, but what made it different from any other trees Shona knew were the flowers that hung in rows from its branches. These were made up of pure white petals with a reddish centre, yet seemed to be not flowers, but leaves. How could that be?
    She stared, she went close, she touched the flowers that were leaves, then turned to Mark Lindsay, who’d been watching her with a smile. ‘I don’t understand,’ she told him. ‘Are these leaves, or flowers?’
    ‘You might say both.