Friends and Lovers Read Online Free PDF Page B

bog.
    “Doesn’t hurt a bit,” she assured her mother cheerfully, looking down at the cut on her leg.
    “We were exploring the rocks, trying to show George the seals, and I slipped into a pool. It’s nothing.” She surveyed David gravely, with frank curiosity. To her a man meant some one who could run more quickly and climb more rocks than she could.
    He also meant some one who paid no attention to her, but just let her come along with her sisters. But this man was smiling as he watched her. She felt he was sort of on her side.
    Mother was asking questions again. Betty said wearily, conscious of her audience, “Oh, Moira and George have gone to the village to see the boat come in. I came to get Grandpa’s old letter.”
    Just wait until I can talk to you alone, my girl, Mrs. Lorrimer thought.
    “And to wash and change.” She looked angrily at-‘the scarred leg.
    “Put some iodine on that. Am wear your stockings. You are much too big a girl to gi I running about with bare legs.”
    Betty’s red cheeks deepened in colour as she was disciplined in public. She glanced nervously at the man standi nj so silently beside her mother.
    “Yes, Mummy,” she said dutifully.
    Old letter, indeed, Mrs. Lorrimer thought.
    “And where’s Penelope?”
    “She stayed to see if the seals came. Don’t worry. Mummy, she went on quickly, seeing the frown on her mother’s face ” She isn’t climbing over the rocks. She’s sitting on the shore She can’t fall off there.”
    Betty, with her natural good humou) once more regained, moved towards the house. She callec over her shoulder to David, “Aren’t you going down to se the boat come in? There are horses on board to-day. One< ‘ there was a storm, and the waves were so big that when ths horses were swimming ashore ‘ ” Betty! You are late,” Mrs. Lorrimer interrupted.
    “Yes, Mummy.” Betty moved another three feet.
    “Yoi couldn’t see their heads,” she finished for David’s benefit, and then ran.
    David felt himself abandoned once more to Mrs. Lorrimer’! quiet disapproval.
    If only she wouldn’t be so polite and sta^ here with him. If only she would go away and do what sh< wanted to do. It would be pleasant to stretch out on the grass and wait here for George to return. Or it would be plea san to explore the island. This was a perfect day for exploring He said suddenly, “I say, Mrs. Lorrimer, why don’t you lei me go over to the Atlantic shore and bring your daughtel I home? She may forget all about time over there.” Davk looked towards the western path across the island.
    “I suppos< if I follow that I can’t go wrong?”
    “There is a stretch of sand at the end of that road. She is probably there.
    I suppose she will be all right, really. But ] never know what these children are up to next. Cave-exploring, rock-climbing, diving through Atlantic breakers. The} think they are indestructible.” Mrs. Lorrimer spoke with e certain relief. She really had wasted so much of this after noon already.
    “I’ll find her, and bring her home totea. Don’t worry. Nc trouble at all.
    I should like a walk. Yes, really I should.
    David said quickly, and started towards the road. Just at that last moment he had felt Mrs. Lorrimer was about to change her mind after all.
    He was perfectly right about that. She remained standing there, hesitating.
    But she was too late now. She turned and went indoors.
    He would have been amused if he had known that Mrs. Lorrimer had already started worrying about him, and worrying all the more because she couldn’t imagine why she should be worrying. But all he was thinking about was the fact that he was free for the next hour, that he was actually going to be left alone. He never seemed to be able to be alone over at the Lodge—not until the others went to bed. They were gregarious animals, and assumed that every one wanted to be like them: an afternoon spent by themselves would seem to them intolerable. This, David decided as he