The Stars Shine Down Read Online Free PDF

fifteen, she entered St. Michael’s High School. She was gangly and awkward, with long legs, stringy black hair, and intelligent gray eyes still too large for her pale, thin face. No one quite knew how she was going to turn out. She was on the verge of womanhood, and her looks were in a stage of metamorphosis. She could have become ugly or beautiful.
    To James Cameron, his daughter was ugly. “Ye hae best marry the first mon fool enough to ask ye,” he told her. “Ye’ll nae hae the looks to make a guid bargain.”
    Lara stood there, saying nothing.
    “And tell the poor mon nae to expect a dowry frae me.”
    Mungo McSween had walked into the room. He stood there listening, furious.
    “That’s all, girl,” James Cameron said. “Gae back to the kitchen.”
    Lara fled.
    “Why dae ye dae that to your daughter?” McSween demanded.
    James Cameron looked up, his eyes bleary. “Nane of your business.”
    “You’re drunk.”
    “Aye. And what else is there? If it isn’t women, it’s the whiskey, isn’t it?”
    McSween went into the kitchen, where Lara was washing dishes at the sink. Her eyes were hot with tears. McSween put his arms around her. “Niver ye mind, lassie,” he said. “He dinna mean it.”
    “He hates me.”
    “Nae, he doesna.”
    “He’s never given me one kind word. Never once. Never!”
    There was nothing McSween could say.
    In the summer the tourists would arrive at Glace Bay. They came in their expensive cars, wearing beautiful clothes and shopped along Castle Street and dined at the Cedar House and at Jasper’s, and they visited Ingonish Beach and Cape Smoky and the Bird Islands. They were superior beings from another world, and Lara envied them and longed to escape with them when they left at the end of summer. But how?
    Lara had heard stories about Grandfather Maxwell.
    “The auld bastard tried to keep me frae marryin’ his precious daughter,” James Cameron would complain to any of the boarders who would listen. “He was filthy rich, but do ye think he wad gie me aught? Nae. But I took guid care of his Peggy anyway…”
    And Lara would fantasize that one day her grandfather would come to take her away to glamorous cities she had read about: London and Rome and Paris. And I’ll have beautiful clothes to wear. Hundreds of dresses and new shoes.
    But as the months and the years went by, and there was no word, Lara finally came to realize that she would never see her grandfather. She was doomed to spend the rest of her life in Glace Bay.

Chapter Four
    T here were myriad activities for a teenager growing up in Glace Bay: There were football games and hockey games, skating rinks and bowling, and in the summer, swimming and fishing. Carl’s Drug Store was the popular after-school hangout. There were two movie theaters, and for dancing, the Venetian Gardens.
    Lara had no chance to enjoy any of those things. She rose at five every morning to help Bertha prepare breakfast for the boarders and make up the beds before she left for school. In the afternoon she would hurry home to begin preparing supper. She helped Bertha serve, and after supper Lara cleared the table and washed and dried the dishes.
    The boardinghouse served some favorite Scottish dishes: howtowdie and hairst bree, cabbieclaw and skirlie. Black Bun was a favorite, a spicy mixture encased in a short paste jacket made from half a pound of flour.
    The conversation of the Scotsmen at supper made the Highlands of Scotland come alive for Lara. Her ancestors had come from the Highlands, and the stories about them gave Lara the only sense of belonging that she had. The boarders talked of the Great Glen containing Loch Ness, Lochy, and Linnhe and of the rugged islands off the coast.
    There was a battered piano in the sitting room, and some-times at night, after supper, half a dozen boarders would gather around and sing the songs of home: “Annie Laurie,” and “Comin’ Through the Rye,” and “The Hills of Home,” and “The