Friends and Lovers Read Online Free PDF

interesting, don’t you think?”
    David agreed politely, but there was a strained look about his mouth.
    What an odd young man, Mrs. Lorrimer decided. He talked so little about the things that really mattered. This was not what George Fenton-Stevens had led her to expect from his friend. Brilliant talker, editor of this magazine, secretary of that society, leading light in the Union … Why, he had made David Bosworth sound really quite interesting. She picked one of the roses, and looked at its soft petals without seeing them. She liked young men handsome and well mannered with nice families and definite careers and high hopes. Who didn’t, with three growing daughters to be launched into successful marriages?
    She tried once more.
    “And how is Lady Fentonstevens?”
    David turned to look at her with some surprise.
    “Charming woman,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, on the strength of one chance meeting some three years ago in Edinburgh. Not that Mrs. Lorrimer approved of all the publicity which Lady Fenton-Stevens managed to attract in the newspapers.
    David only smiled, and Mrs. Lorrimer felt uneasy. If she had been a mind-reader she would have been horrified.
    “You are a friend of the family’s, aren’t you?” she asked.
    “Not exactly. I’m staying at Loch Innish as a tutor. George’s young brother and his cousin need some grounding, and George and I are doing some reading together too when we get time for that.” David made an effort to end this question-and-answer conversation.
    “The Lodge is an interesting old place. It must have seen a lot of fighting in the days when the McDonalds owned it. Their coat of arms is carved over the entrance, you know.” And a Margaret McDonald is the housekeeper, and a Malcolm McDonald is the head gillie— but let that pass, he thought tactfully.
    “Oh, these McDonalds were very good sheep-stealers and pirates themselves,” Mrs. Lorrimer said lightly.
    “It isn’t wise to investigate any of the past history round here. All these Highlanders were very wild.”
    “Fortunately for us!” David said, with a laugh.
    “Or England might have found herself being attacked by Norsemen who had settled quite cosily in these mountains.”
    There was a tolerant silence. Oh, God, David thought, isn’t that letter finished yet? And then, as his eyes left the garden, searching for some possible piece of conversation which would not leave them feeling this hidden antagonism, he found his release.
    “Hello!” he said.
    “There is some one in rather a hurry.” He pointed to a small thin figure scrambling over the hillside with more energy than grace.
    “That’s Betty,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.
    “I wonder where the others can be.” There was a motherly note of anxiety in her voice which made her sound human for the first time.
    “Oh, they’ll be all right, Mrs. Lorrimer,” David said.
    “George is really awfully good with children. He handles his small brother and shrimp of a cousin very well.”
    Mrs. Lorrimer looked strangely at the young man beside her. But she did not reply, for her attention was gathering on her daughter, now within polite calling distance.
    “Don’t jump like that, Betty. It’s dangerous. You’ll sprain your ankle.”
    The girl, one of those long-legged pole-like creatures who haven’t yet become conscious of their sex, waved cheerily back, but she stopped leaping from mound to mound obediently and settled into a jogging run.
    “I wish I had had three boys,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, as if to herself.
    “It would not matter if they were to thicken their ankles, or break a nose, or have a scar on their cheek. Just look at you, Betty!”
    Betty, red-cheeked and breathless, looked. She had seaweed stains across the shoulders of her blouse, her skirt was wet at the hem as if she had waded in the sea and had misjudged the height of a wave, there was a long red score on her leg still bleeding slightly, and her shoes were caked with the black earth of the peat