Between Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

Her enthusiasm and pleasure in her new life flourished and as she grew so did her beauty. The skin of her neck and face was flawless with no more than a hint of colour in it apart from the dozen or so golden freckles which dusted her nose. Her eyes glowed with the richness of a topaz and her hair became even more vivid with the shine of her health.
    Martin was the ‘handy’ one of the two boys. A ‘wonder’ he was, Mrs Whitley said with ‘that there machinery’, or indeed anything which came apart and could be put together again. He was neat fingered, showing an aptitude from an early age with kitchen appliances such as the knife sharpener, the mechanical workings of the insides of the household clocks, the mangle in the laundry which had a tendency to become jammed, the workings of the flue and the hot-plate and indeed any gadget or apparatus which needed oiling, cleaning, repairing or a part replaced. They had only to be put in his hands and he seemed to sense what was needed and to know exactly how to put it right.
    Now Tom, he was different! Though his parentage was not known since he had been an inmate, like Martin, at the orphanage, from birth, it seemed evident from his appearance that one of the young travellers from Scandinavia, on his way to the new world had persuaded some pretty maid to succumb to his fair-haired charm! Like the Vikings of old Tom was tall and golden-skinned with a short cap of curls the colour of wheat. His eyes were the vivid sea-blue of the waters of the Norwegian Fjords and his slow, easy-going smile was already beginning to turn the heads of the parlour maids in the Square. He was even tempered, quick to laugh, unhurried with an infectious good humour which would allow no-one to be cross with him for long. Mr Lloyd said he had a head on his shoulders and if he could conquer his natural inclination towards unruffled indolence, his tendency to live only for today, would make a good steward, or even an agent in the company’s service like himself.
    They were each as different from one another as the carriage is from the horse which pulls it and yet they fitted together, the three of them, forged in the years of their young childhood into a strong, unbreakable triangle. Children then, but suddenly, with the incident of Fancy O’Neill, they were grown up!
    The hot weather ended the following day with a storm of such magnitude, and with rain which fell so heavily and for so long it flooded the coal cellar and Martin Hunter and Tom Fraser had no time to consider their new conception of Megan Hughes as they worked furiously to keep the storm water from invading Mrs Whitley’s kitchen. They barely had time to notice Meg as she huddled in the corner of the hearth and had they done so it was doubtful they would have plucked up the nerve to speak to her! Just at the moment and possibly for the next few days, or even weeks the sight of her would embarrass them to awkward silence for they were still only boys at heart, without the delicate perception to know how to deal with her shocked female humiliation at Fancy O’Neill’s hands. She had become an unknown quantity, one of the beings whom, during the past months, as they matured, they had eyed and whistled after and whispered about. They were boys and yet
not
boys. Young men and yet
not
and their Meggie had suddenly and in the most devastating way, become a woman and they simply could not cope with it!
    Their Meggie was just a kid. A teasing girl fresh from school with a ribbon on the end of her plait, a youngster in an apron who drove them mad at times with her constant chatter, her wayward determination to be in on everything they did in their masculine world, her ruthless and spirited certainty that she should know their every thought! She was a bloody nuisance at times, as younger sisters are. She worked with them, shared their table and many of their jaunts into town but more and more, as Martin went down to the boys’ gymnasium where he