The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online

say?” Kit wondered.
    This was a good idea. Sister Madeleine wasn’t black and white about things. Happily they scampered off down the lane to consult her. She thought it might well be possible, some people did have a gift.
    â€œHow much silver do you think she’d need to cross her palm, would a threepence do?” Kit wondered.
    â€œI’d say she’d want more, what would you say, Sister Madeleine?” Clio was excited. It was her birthday next week, maybe they might get enough money before the caravans left. How marvelous to know the future.
    But to their disappointment Sister Madeleine didn’t seem at all in favor of it. She never told anyone not to do anything, she didn’t use words like “foolish” or “unwise,” Sister Madeleine never spoke of sin or things being wrong. She just looked at them with her eyes burning from her brown lined face and her look said everything. “It’s not safe to know the future,” she said.
    And in the silence that followed both Clio and Kit felt themselves shiver. They were glad when Whiskers stood up and gave a long, unexplained yowl at nothing in particular.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Rita made her quiet way down the narrow road to Sister Madeleine’s cottage. She carried her poetry book and the warm shortbread that was just out of the oven. To her surprise she heard voices. Usually the hermit was alone when she called for her lessons.
    She was about to move away but Sister Madeleine called out. “Come on in, Rita. We’ll have a cup of tea together.”
    It was the tinker woman who told fortunes. Rita knew her immediately, because she had been to her last year. She had given her half a crown and had heard that her life would change, she would have seven times by seven times the land that her father had owned. That would mean she was to have nearly fifty acres. The woman had seen that she would have a life with book learning, and she would marry a man who was at this moment across the sea. She also saw that the children of the marriage would be difficult, it wasn’t clear whether in their health or their disposition. She said that Rita would be buried when she died in a big cemetery, not in the churchyard in Lough Glass.
    It had been very exciting to go to the woman, who told fortunes only by the lakeshore. She had said she didn’t like doing it near the camps, near her own people. They didn’t approve of her doing it. She said it was because she was too good. Listening to her, Rita had believed that this might be true. Everything had been said with a great, calm certainty. And the bits about the book learning had begun to come true.
    Rita had been struck then and now how like the mistress she was. If you saw them in a poor light you’d swear that the tinker woman and Mrs. McMahon were sisters. She wondered what she was doing here with Sister Madeleine, but she would never know.
    â€œRita and I read poetry together.” Sister Madeleine made the only gesture she would ever make toward an introduction. The woman nodded as if she only expected as much; she was sure that everything else she had seen in the future was true also.
    And suddenly, with a slight sense of alarm, so was Rita. There was a man across the sea who would marry her, she would have fifty acres of land, and money in her own right. She would have children and they would not be easy. She thought about her tombstone, far away in a city with lots of other crosses nearby.
    The woman slipped silently away.
    â€œâ€˜My dark Rosaleen,’” said Sister Madeleine. “Read it nice and slowly to me. I’ll close my eyes and make pictures of it all.”
    Rita stood in the sunlight by the little window where people had brought pots of geraniums for the hermit, and with the bantam chicks around her feet she read…

    â€œ
My dark Rosaleen
,
    My own Rosaleen
,
    Shall glad your heart and give you hope
    Shall give