Read Friendly Young Ladies for Free Online Page B

artist for a mild broncho-pneumonia. An interesting case, psychologically I mean, and rather a pitiful one. The child is nearly eighteen, but what with the stone rabbits and the Atlantic and the fact that her parents live like cat and dog and she knows the whole village knows it, she has taken refuge between the covers of a Girls’ Annual and, unless someone snaps the poor little brat out of it, is in a fair way to going through her adult life in a sort of fifth-form daydream. Which would be a pity, as she obviously has the makings of emotion and intelligence, combined with the kind of painful plainness which in a year or two, with sexual animation, might suddenly become attractive, and without it will get more dismal from year to year. I think subconsciously, under a ton or two of inhibition, she dimly realizes this; which makes a fascinating problem of an otherwise humdrum case. It’s a pity you’re not here; you would do her a world of good. Failing you” (he could not help thinking, quite consciously, that this was rather handsome), “I’m doing what I can with her. There is some local story about a disowned elder sister who eloped with I forget who, no doubt a woman of character, of whom she has been taught to be ashamed. I am hoping to draw her out, discreetly, on this as a starting-point. Meanwhile I have got her receptive, which of course is tricky going, but I think I have succeeded in hitting the right note.”
    At this point the clock surprised him by striking eight. He had written the last paragraph chiefly for his own amusement, and hastily ran over the letter from the beginning to see if it would do. It was a satisfaction to him (he lit a final cigarette on it) to decide that there was nothing in it which could possibly hurt Norah’s feelings. His dislike of hurting anyone was entirely genuine, as traits which people use for effect often are; and from this it followed that if anyone insisted on being hurt by him, he found the injury hard to forgive.
    A smell of frying mushrooms warned him that his supper must be almost ready. Concluding the letter with a prettily phrased but censorable valediction, he slapped the writing-pad shut over his still-wet signature, and went upstairs to wash his hands.

CHAPTER V
    “S O YOU SEE,” SAID Peter, “there it is.” He gave a conclusive little smile at the cobalt-blue limits of the sea.
    “Yes,” said Elsie. If the waters of the bay had been turned to blood, she would not have known, or, probably, cared. She leaned against her supporting rock, stroking with absent fingers a rosette of yellow lichen, and looked at Peter. So might a twelfth-century mystic have looked at an archangel, manifested on a sunny day out of blue cliff-top air.
    “Trust yourself, first and all the time. It’s your life. Hang on to it. Nobody else, however much they care about you, can do it for you.”
    “Yes,” said Elsie, “I will.” It was not a declaration, it was a response in a litany. However much they care about you. It came back to her in waves of light from the clouds and grass and the long white lines of the rollers ruled across the beach.
    “You’re losing your muffler.” He caught at its blowing end, and, leaning forward where he sat, tucked it snugly in for her. She sat quite still; only her spirit seemed to tremble and shiver at his touch, like an image refracted in the heat of the sun. “Don’t let them throttle you up in woollies for the rest of the year, though. Start getting some light and air into you as soon as it gets warm.”
    “Oh, I will.” She wondered how it would be possible to hold more of either than at this moment. It seemed to her that she could have floated from the cliff-edge and balanced, like the gulls, on the upward eddies of the wind.
    “You’ve had a tough break. I know, if anyone does, what it means to hang on alone.” His eyes seemed to be sharing a secret with the horizon. He was remembering, not without satisfaction, certain