Friends and Lovers by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page A

only when they saw the group standing at the doorway that they realized how late they must be. For Captain Ma clean was there. David remembered with sudden guilt that there were such things as tide and current to be considered. Ma clean had warned them to be ready to sail at six o’clock.
    Betty came running towards them.
    “You’re late—awfully late. What went wrong? Penny, Mother’s simply furious. You missed tea.”
    David noticed Penny’s suddenly grave face.
    “I’m sorry about this,” he said.
    “It’s my fault.”
    “No, it wasn’t. It was mine too. The time seemed so short.”
    “Did it?” He was pleased.
    “Yes,” she said simply. They had forgotten about Betty. But she reminded them quickly enough.
    “It was both their faults 1’ she called to the waiting group as she ran back to them.
    Penny said furiously, “That’s torn it. I sometimes wonder if I was really so impossible at her age.”
    “We all were. Come on, cheer up.” David still looked bewildered at the peculiar reactions to a harmless walk. God, he thought, does that old dragon think I was seducing her daughter? Then he saw that Penny was more embarrassed than he was.
    “Aren’t you ever allowed out alone?” he asked half-jokingly.
    “We have pretty strict rules,” she said in a low voice. Now he would think that she was only a schoolgirl. That would be enough to damn her in the eyes of any University man. She wished the hillside would open and swallow her up.
    As they reached the group at the door she forced an air of unconcern which deceived neither her mother nor Moira. Moira was looking very much elder-sister. By one year, Penny thought angrily. She ignored Moira, and said to her mother, “Sorry we were late.”
    “We had no idea of the time,” David said cheerfully.
    “My watch stopped. I’m awfully sorry if we kept you waiting.”
    “Captain Ma clean has been waiting,” Mrs. Lorrimer said with marked dignity, ‘for almost fifteen minutes.”
    “We’ve time enough yet,” Ma clean said, with his usual slow smile.
    “Time enough.”
    “My fault entirely,” David said, conscious of Fentonstevens’s amused eye.
    “I didn’t believe that seals would appear. So we waited until they did.”
    “They actually did?” George was interested now.
    “A regular squad, complete with sergeant-major and waxed mustache.”
    Penny laughed, and the others smiled, all except Mrs. Lorrimer, who thought the remark quite meaningless.
    “Well,” Dr. MacLntyre said, “I’m glad you did have time to see the Atlantic coast. Goodbye. And come again. Delighted to see you. We all might have a picnic together some day.” He waved a friendly hand to the two young men, and retired into the house with an abruptness which David thought admirable.
    “That would be grand,” George said to Mrs. Lorrimer.
    “We shall have another free day in a week’s time.”
    “But we are leaving at the end of the month, and that’s next week,” Betty said. There was exaggerated disappointment in her voice. Mrs. Lorrimer made a mental note to speak to Betty really severely this evening: far too much playacting in front of people, far too much consciousness of an audience.
    “Well, perhaps we could arrange an earlier date than that,” Fenton-Stevens said.
    “What day would suit you, Mrs. Lorrimer?”
    David let George do all the arranging. George liked that kind of thing, anyway. David stood silent, near Penny, not looking at her and yet conscious of her. He moved restlessly as George and Mrs. Lorrimer, then Betty and Moira and even Ma clean were all drawn into the whirlpool of discussion. First the day, then the time, then the place … what did it all matter? He and Penny would not be allowed one moment together. They would have to listen to others, talk to others, and hardly dare look at each other. Even now the family’s influence was trying to check the current of intimacy which had flowed so easily between them only half an hour ago.
    It