The Young Wan Read Online Free

Agnes looked over to the school doorway; the various class groups were getting into line to march back into class. She turned back to Marion.
     
    “We better go in,” Agnes said and extended her hand. “Come on.”
     
    “Nah, you go on, I’m going to work.” Marion began to climb the railings.
     
    “But Sister Conception will miss you.” Agnes was aghast.
     
    “I don’t care.” Marion was now on the other side of the rails. “See ya.”
     
    “But she’ll slap you tomorrow for this.” Agnes was panicking now. Marion began to trot away, calling over her shoulder, “She’ll slap me anyway, see ya.” And she was gone. Agnes returned to the class, but thought of nothing else for the afternoon except this girl who seemed to have no fear. That’s what Agnes wanted, what every child wants more than anything else. Just to be not afraid. Within days the two girls were friends. Within weeks they were inseparable, and within months Agnes Reddin was not afraid. They did everything together, growing to have a great influence on each other. Marion began to spend more time at school, and Agnes became more and more unafraid. Incredibly, they would manage to make it through their childhood and teens without ever falling out, as children usually do.
     
     
     
    Now, years later, as they lay on the floor holding hands, they wore each other’s friendship like a second skin. They lay there breathless and smiling, looking up at the dress.
     
    “You’re going to go through with it, aren’t you? You’re determined to wear that dress,” Marion said.
     
    “Uh-huh,” Agnes confirmed.
     
    “You’re a stubborn bitch, do you know that?” Marion half sat as she said this.
     
    “Not stubborn, Marion, I just know what’s right, and this is right. It’s a stupid rule made by stupid people,” Agnes said, stubbornly.
     
    “Made by the Pope,” Marion exclaimed.
     
    “Well, so what? What would he know about marriage anyway? If you don’t play the game, don’t make the rules. That’s what I say!” And they both laughed again.
     
    Agnes’ rebellious stand was typical of her. She did not lick it from the ground, it was in her genes. It stretched back before she was born to a time when making a stand for what you thought was “right” could cost you your life.
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Dublin February 23, 1921
     
    Constance Parker-Willis would not recall it for a long time, but her initial encounter with Bosco Reddin had been a traumatic one.
     
    The Parker-Willis family had been casting iron in Dublin since 1801. Constance’s father, Geoffrey Parker-Willis, had inherited the foundry from his grandfather, when his own father, an officer in the Light Brigade, had been killed in the Boer War. Always a successful business, the foundry really boomed for Geoffrey with the coming of the Great War, when output and profits soared. War had been good to Geoffrey. He married Julia Cornwell, a timid woman who bore him four daughters.
     
    By 1921, Constance, the eldest of these girls, and nearly twenty-five years of age, was the only Parker-Willis girl who actually worked. Constance had taken a great interest in the foundry from early, and with no son to follow him and two of Constance’s three younger sisters married off, with the third about to be, Geoffrey decided to allow Constance to work in the accounting room of the foundry. Constance loved working there. The noise and the heat, the constant explosions of molten droplets hopping across the foundry floor, and the clanking of machinery, were so far removed from the boring world of high society in which her three sisters mixed as to be music to Constance’s ears. The foundry was situated on Misery Hill, on Dublin’s south docks. The foundry cannot take credit for the street name; rather, it was named Misery Hill in the seventeenth century, when the area was a leper colony.
     
    That cold February day in 1921, Constance had been working in the foundry and was just