The Loud Halo Read Online Free PDF Page B

a tolerant smile. Hector and Erchy were still propping up the end of Tom-Tom’s house but by this time they had been joined by Old Murdoch and Yawn who had doubtless come to offer cautionary advice although at this moment they were engaged in conversation with a young girl who stood, slim and straight, between the two bent old men, like an ‘I’ in parenthesis.
    â€˜Yon’s the lassie that’s been stayin’ with Mary Ann over the last few days,’ said Morag in a low voice. ‘You’ll have seen her likely?’
    â€˜Only in the distance,’ I admitted.
    â€˜She was askin’ Hector last night would she get back to the mainland with him today an’ he had to promise her he’d take her.’
    â€˜I should jolly well think he would have promised,’ I muttered as we drew closer. She was quite the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, with huge brown, lustrous eyes, dark curly hair, exquisitely fine bones and a skin of such golden-ness that it looked on this dull day as though it was exuding sunshine. Even I felt momentarily stunned by her appearance. What she did to men I could only guess.
    â€˜But, Hector,’ she was saying with wheedling fretfulness as we approached, ‘you promised you’d take me. I would have gone on the bus this morning and caught the ferry if I’d thought your boat wouldn’t be going. I’ve simply got to be back in the office in London on Monday morning or I’ll get the sack.’
    Hector only hunched his shoulders harder against the wall and looked sulky.
    â€˜Ach, you’ll not get the sack,’ consoled Erchy. ‘Tell them you got held up by the storm an’ it’ll be all right.’
    â€˜I can’t tell them that,’ she retorted.
    â€˜Why not?’ demanded Erchy.
    â€˜They wouldn’t understand.’
    Erchy grunted his scepticism.
    â€˜It’ll maybe get a bit calmer by this evening yet,’ Yawn prophesied, and the girl who, despite the fact that her teeth were chattering, still managed to look ravishing, brightened up visibly.
    â€˜Will you take me across this evening then, if it gets calm?’ she coaxed, with a look at the men that should have sent them hurrying to launch any number of boats.
    â€˜Ach, no,’ said the usually impressionable Hector, shuffling uncomfortably. ‘Tse tide will be all wrong by tsis evenin’ for gettin’ the dinghy off the shore.’
    The girl’s expression as she turned to me was a mixture of chagrin and disbelief.
    â€˜Please,’ she begged. ‘They don’t seem to understand how terribly important it is for me to get back. It’s a new job I’ve landed—quite a good one and I wasn’t really due a holiday yet but they kindly let me have these few days. Will you try to explain to Hector for me?’
    I shook my head, understanding her frustration but by now almost as out of touch with her world as were the rest of the group.
    â€˜Well,’ said Erchy with decision. ‘You say you cannot get back to London by Monday morning unless you leave here tonight. An’ you cannot leave here tonight so you cannot do anythin’ else but wait.’
    â€˜They’ll not take it so badly if you just explain to them that it was the storm that kept you back,’ soothed Yawn. ‘An’ the tide,’ he added as an afterthought.
    The lassie drooped with dejection. ‘I’ve told you,’ she reiterated. ‘You can’t explain to people in London about things like that. They’ll never believe it,’ she finished with a grim smile.
    Yawn was visibly staggered. ‘They wouldn’t believe you?’ he demanded.
    The lassie shook her head.
    â€˜Well, lassie,’ he advised her with great gravity, ‘I’m tellin’ you, you’d best never go back at all to a place like that. If they don’ understand about storms and tides and things they must