Circle of Friends Read Online Free PDF

wander back in good time.”
    “How could we show them?” Benny was eager.
    “I don’t know. Something simple at the start. Could you ask me to stay the night here, for one thing?”
    “Of course I could.”
    “Then I could show Mother Francis that I’d be back up in the convent in time for mass in the chapel, and she’d get to know I was to be relied on.”
    “Mass on a weekday?”
    “Every day. At seven.”
    “No!”
    “It’s quite nice. The nuns sing beautifully, it’s nice and peaceful. Really I don’t mind it. Father Ross comes in specially and he gets a lovely breakfast in the parlor. He says the other priests envy him.”
    “I didn’t know that … every day.”
    “You won’t tell anyone will you?”
    “No. Is it a secret?”
    “Not a bit, it’s just that I
don’t
tell anything you see, and the community likes that, they feel I’m part of them. I didn’t have a friend before. There wasn’t anyone to tell.”
    Benny smiled from ear to ear. “What night will you come? Wednesday night?”
    “I don’t know, Eve. You don’t have any smart pajamas or anything to be going to stay with people. You don’t have a good sponge bag, things that people who go visiting need.”
    “My pajamas are fine, Mother.”
    “You could iron them, certainly, and you have a dressing gown.” She seemed to be faltering. “A sponge bag though?”
    “Could Sister Imelda make one for me? I’ll do extra clearing up for her.”
    “And what time will you come back?”
    “I’ll be at my
prie dieu
in time for mass, Mother.”
    “You won’t want to get up that early if you’re visiting people.” Mother Francis’s face was soft.
    “That’s what I’d want, Mother.”
    It was a great evening. They played rummy with Patsy in the kitchen for a long time because Mother and Father went across the road to Dr. and Mrs. Johnson’s house. It was a supper to celebrate the christening of their new baby.
    Eve asked Patsy all about the orphanage, and Patsy told more details than she had ever told Benny. She explained how they used to steal food, and how hard it was when she came to the Hogans, her first job, to realize she didn’t have to take any stray biscuit or a fistful of sugar and put it into her apron.
    In bed that night Benny said in wonder, “I don’t know why Patsy told us all that. Only the other day she was saying to me that people with no parents didn’t like being asked questions.”
    “Ah, it’s different with me,” Eve said. “I’m in the same boat.”
    “No you’re not!” Benny was indignant. “Patsy had nothing. She had to work in that awful place and get nits and steal and be beaten for wetting the bed. She had to leave there at fifteen and come here. It’s not a bit like you.”
    “No. We are the same, she has no family, I don’t. She didn’t have a home like you do.”
    “Is that why you told her more than you told me?” Benny had been even more astounded at the questions Patsy felt free to ask. Did Eve hate the Westwards who were so rich for not taking her into the big house? Eve didn’t, they couldn’t, they were Protestants, she explained. Lots more, things Benny wouldn’t have dared to ask.
    “You don’t ask things like that,” Eve said simply.
    “I’d be afraid of upsetting you,” Benny said.
    “You couldn’t upset a friend,” Eve said.
    Benny and Eve, who had lived all their lives in the same village, were each amazed at the things the other didn’t know about Knockglen.
    Benny didn’t know that the three priests who lived in the presbytery had been given the game of Scrabble, which they played every night, and sometimes rang the convent to ask Mother Francis questions like how you spelled “quixotic”because Father O’Brien was going to get a triple word score.
    Eve hadn’t known that Mr. Burns in the hardware shop was inclined to take to the drink or that Dr. Johnson had a very bad temper and was heard shouting about God never putting a mouth into the world