Pure as the Lily Read Online Free PDF

old. It was from then that her mother had gone to work for Mr. Tollett. It was just the baby, the house, and the meals she saw to at first; but now she helped in the shop. She went three times a day, even on Sundays.
    Half-way down the street there was an alleyway leading to Crowdon Road. There was a lamp-post on the edge of the pavement opposite the alleyway around which there was always a crowd of children playing, but
    tonight, raining heavily as it was, there were no children. But as she approached the lamp-post she made out two dim figures standing opposite in the shelter of the draughty passage, and when she recognized them her heart began to beat a little faster. They were Hughie Amesden and Paul Connelly.

    It was Paul Connelly as always who spoke to her.
    “Hello Mary,” he said.
    She stopped tentatively, standing in the middle of the pavement within the halo of the lamp.
    “Hello,” she said.
    “Going some place?”
    “Just to the shop.” She looked at Paul as she answered him but all the while she was seeing Hughie.
    She had no need to look at Hughie to see him; she saw him so clearly in the night that she almost imagined he was sitting on the side of her bed talking to her, and the fact that he should talk to her would, she knew, be as great an impossibility as to find him sitting on the side of her bed, for he never spoke to her.
    He had once said “Hello,” but that was the only exchange that had been between them, and she had known him since she was ten. He was so good-looking that even the texture of his skin made her ache to look at it; his face was long and pale, his eyes deep-set and dark, but his hair was fair and wavy.
    Added to all these charms was Hughie’s height. He was the tallest boy in all the streets around, he must be all of six foot now and still only seventeen. She’d never forget the first day she knew she loved him. It was one Sunday night last summer. Mrs. Turner had given her a frock. She had altered it, and she felt she looked bonny in it, so she had gone to church in the evening, because more people could see you in church. If you came out late they were standing about and they looked at you. And she wanted people to see her new frock because she had never had one like it; what was more, she’d had to fight to keep it because her mother had wanted it her mother took most of the things that Mrs. Turner gave her, her mother liked dressing up. The dress was of a dull yellow colour, not gaudy. She didn’t know what the material was but it was like a fine wool. It had a square neck and a full skirt. She hadn’t the dress anymore; her mother had burnt it. She threw it into the fire when they were having a row. But on that Sunday night Paul Connelly and Hughie Amesden were standing at the end of the road. She saw them immediately she left the church steps because Hughie Amesden always stood out above everybody else, and she remembered walking towards them and then the most odd thing happened. It was lovely but frightening. She saw Hughie Amesden slowly disappear into a white light;
    there was nothing left of him but white light, it even blotted out Paul Gonnelly. And the other funny thing was she never remembered passing them. She was a full street away when she came to herself and she thought, Where’s he gone? And she had turned round, and there they were right at the far end of the street and she hadn’t been aware of passing them. She had stood with her hand to her throat and had gulped and then coughed, and a woman passing by had stopped and said, “Are you all right, hinny?” She had taken hold of her arm and added, “Why, you’re shivering, lass; you’ve got a summer cold.” She had nodded at the woman, then walked on; and she had known she had fallen in love with Hughie Amesden, that she’d always been in love with him since he had first come into the neighbourhood when she was ten. Yet he had never, never spoken to her, only that once when they were standing in the