The Carpenter's Children by Maggie Bennett Read Free Book Online

thoughts sometimes strayed to marriage and having babies; life in a vicarage must be ideally happy! She caught Mr Storey’s eye again over the laden table, and blushed furiously at the thought that sprung unbidden to her mind; she quickly lowered her eyes and turned away, little realising that Mark Storey had noted pretty Miss Munday from the post office. He thought how refreshingly shy and modest she was, compared to some of the young ladies who eyed him boldly and whispered to each other behind their hands,which he found most disconcerting. He wondered how long he could expect to remain curate at St Peter’s; since Canon Harrington’s death, the Rev. Mr Saville had become vicar, and had been given the newly ordained Mark Storey as his assistant, a young unmarried man who occupied a room in the vicarage and joined the family for meals. It was an exciting life in the Lord’s service, as Mark saw it, and he hoped he would not be moved to another parish for at least the next two years.
    ‘What d’you think of Mr Storey, Isabel?’ whispered Grace, having noticed the glance that had passed between the curate and her sister.
    ‘Nothing at all,’ replied Isabel, frowning at Grace’s saucy manner.
    ‘He’s very handsome, isn’t he?’ observed Grace unabashed, but Isabel turned away to pour out cups of tea, wincing in case Mr Storey might have overheard Grace’s nonsense; what a disaster it would be!
    And yet… She had noticed Phyllis Bird smiling at Ernest when he and Ted Bird set out with the Everham Cycling Club;
Ernest
of all people, her brother! The two lads pedalled off with the club every Saturday, but Mrs Munday would not allow her son to join them on Sundays.
    ‘If the Birds are willing to let their sons desert their church, that’s up to them, though I’m surprised at Mr Bird, a churchwarden,’ she declared. ‘But ofcourse, my Ernest wouldn’t
want
to miss going to church with his family.’
    And it seemed she was right, for Ernest continued to attend St Peter’s without protest, and he also remained a member of Mr Woodman’s Bible study group on Sunday afternoons. Paul Woodman was now at Bristol in his final year of training for the ministry, though he had changed his allegiance from the Church of England to the Methodist form of worship. His parents, taken aback at first, had soon followed suit, which meant that they now had to walk all the way to South Camp each Sunday to attend the rather nondescript building with its corrugated iron roof, where the preacher weekly exhorted his largely impoverished flock of menial workers to turn away from sin and be saved, celebrating their conversion with hearty, ecstatic hymnsinging which gave rise to some local complaints about the noise.
    The evangelical tone of the Bible study group remained much the same as it had always been, and Ernest, now one of the older members, was sometimes asked by Mr Woodman to lead the younger boys in prayer. He also found himself thoroughly enjoying the Saturday explorations of the all-male cycling club, pedalling out to Guildford and the Hog’s Back, and to Hindhead and the Devil’s Punch Bowl. The sun and the wind on his face were exhilarating, as was the sheer physical exertion when they had to pedal uphill, and Ernestwould overtake half of his puffing companions, some of whom had been scornful classmates at Everham Council School.
    ‘Are you looking forward to leaving home and going to that commercial college, Ernest?’ Isabel asked him one evening towards the end of August.
    ‘I think I am,’ he replied with a smile. ‘It’ll be good to know that I’m training to do the sort of work I know I could do well.’
    ‘You mean like being manager of some big firm?’
    ‘Perhaps one day,’ he said, though he privately saw himself as a chief librarian who also wrote and published poetry.
    ‘But you’d have to start off as a junior in some poky little office, wouldn’t you?’ Grace chimed in, having heard their