The Glass Lake Read Online Free Page B

and see if we could find a squirrel?” He looked at the girls in the boat. “I know I’m a fusser. I just came down to be sure you were all right.”
    â€œOf course we’re all right.”
    â€œAnd you’ll take no chances? This is a dangerous lake.”
    â€œDaddy, please!”
    He went off, and they saw Anna grumbling and following him.
    â€œHe’s very nice, your father,” said Clio, fitting the oars properly into the oarlocks.
    â€œYes, when you think of the fathers we might have got,” Kit agreed.
    â€œMr. Sullivan up in the home.” Clio gave an example.
    â€œTommy Bennet, the bad-tempered postman.”
    â€œOr Paddles Burns, the barman with the big feet…”
    They laughed at their lucky escapes.
    â€œPeople often wonder why your father married your mother though,” Clio said.
    Kit felt a bile of defense rise in her throat. “No they don’t wonder that.
You
might wonder it,
people
don’t wonder it at all.”
    â€œKeep your hair on, I’m only saying what I heard.”
    â€œWho said what? Where did you hear it?” Kit’s face was hot and angry. She could have pushed her friend Clio into the dark lake and held her head down when she surfaced. Kit was almost alarmed at the strength of her feeling.
    â€œOh, people say things…” Clio was lofty.
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œLike, your mother was a different sort of person, not a local person from here…you know.”
    â€œNo, I don’t know. Your mother isn’t from here either, she’s from Limerick.”
    â€œBut she used to come here on holidays, that made her sort of from here.”
    â€œMy mother came here when she met Dad, and that makes her from here too.” There were tears in Kit’s eyes.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Clio said. She really did sound repentant.
    â€œWhat are you sorry about?”
    â€œFor saying your mother wasn’t from here.”
    Kit felt she was sorry for more, for hinting at a marriage that was less than satisfactory. “Oh, don’t be stupid, Clio. No one cares what you say about where my mother is from, you’re so boring. My mother’s from Dublin and that’s twenty times more interesting than being from old Limerick.”
    â€œSure,” said Clio.
    The sunlight went out of the day. Kit didn’t enjoy the first summer outing on the lake. She felt Clio didn’t either, there was a sense of relief when they each went home.

    R ITA got two weeks holiday every July.
    â€œI’ll miss going to Sister Madeleine,” she told Kit.
    â€œImagine missing lessons,” Kit said.
    â€œAh, it’s what you didn’t have, you see. Everyone wants what they don’t have.”
    â€œWhat would you really like to do in the holidays?” Kit asked.
    â€œI suppose not to have to go home. It’s not a home like this one. My mother’d hardly notice whether I was there or not, except to ask me for money.”
    â€œWell, don’t go.”
    â€œWhat else would I do?”
    â€œCould you stay here and not work?” Kit suggested. “I’d bring you a cup of tea in the mornings.”
    Rita laughed. “No, that wouldn’t work. But you’re right, I don’t have to go home.” Rita said she would discuss it with Sister Madeleine; the hermit might have an idea.
    The hermit had a great idea. She thought that Mother Bernard above in the convent would simply love someone to come and help her spring-clean the parlor for a few hours a day, maybe even give it a lick of paint. And in return Rita could stay in the school and some of the nuns would give her a hand with the lessons.
    Rita had a great holiday, she said, the best in her life.
    â€œYou mean it was nice staying with the nuns?”
    â€œIt was lovely, you don’t know the peace of the place and the lovely singing in the chapel, and I had a key and could go to the town to