The Healing Stream by Connie Monk Read Free Book Online Page A

Richards—’
    ‘Her name’s Tessa, she told you so.’ Despite having given her approval for Tessa’s appointment, Deirdre’s tone was as disagreeable as before. ‘I didn’t say I liked her, I just said that she’d do.’
    ‘That’s quite enough! Just remember your manners or Miss Richards will refuse the position,’ her father answered. ‘You may leave us now to discuss the details.’
    Deirdre skilfully turned the wheels of her chair and made towards the door, but not before Tessa had seen how she bit hard on the corners of her mouth in an attempt to hold back the tears.
    ‘Deirdre’s right, Mr Masters. It would be nice if you called me Tessa, don’t you think? I’m not much older than she is and “Miss” really doesn’t suit me. I can start whenever you like and I’m sure she and I will get on like a house on fire.’
    So the engagement was finalized. She was to be paid thirty pounds a month and would work from ten in the morning until six, Mondays to Fridays with two weeks holiday a year.
    ‘A funny sort of job if you ask me,’ was Richard’s opinion, ‘and nothing to show for it.’
    ‘I hope there will be plenty to show for it. Deirdre really is a grouch, there’s no better way of describing her, but what a lonely, unnatural existence. I doubt if she has any friends of her own age – and certainly not here where they are now. It’s as if she’s full of resentment and needs to take her feelings out on everybody else.’
    ‘You might say something the same about you.’
    ‘Me?’ Tessa was shocked by the remark. ‘I know that’s how I must have seemed when you came to the island, but I suppose I was frightened and miserable—’
    ‘I didn’t mean you were like her in being a – what was it you called her – a grouch? No, I meant that Mother was more than seventy when you lost your parents. Your salvation must have been boarding school. I know it used to worry her that you were always an outsider to girls of your own age on the island. So what companionship did you have after you left school?’
    ‘Gran and I were real friends. If she’d lived to be a hundred, she would never have been old. And I could walk and run and swim and drive, I could get a job and feel I was part of things that matter. Poor Deirdre is so restricted and all her father’s money doesn’t make a scrap of difference. You know what I want? I want to make her forget to pout and to let her face learn to show she is pleased with life. But it’s a tall order.’
    Despite her confidence, there were days during the first few weeks when she despaired of bringing a change in Deirdre’s attitude.
You don’t know what it’s like . . . it’s easy for you . . . at six o’clock you’ll hop on your bike and pedal away into the real living world.
    ‘Why don’t you bring her to see us here at Chagleigh? There is something very healing about a farm,’ Naomi suggested, then added with a mischievous twinkle, ‘apart from the mud and worse she might encounter in the yard.’
    And the very next morning, that’s what Tessa did, despite Deirdre’s mood of despondency. ‘I’ve got a plan,’ she greeted her sulky-looking charge. ‘I want to drive us along to the farm where I live. Come on, put a smile on your face. You look about as glum as I felt when I got taken to live there; but, honestly, you’ll love it.’
    ‘It’s a miserable, dull morning. What’s the point of going anywhere on a day like this?’
    ‘I want you to see where I live. It’s so one-sided that I know Fiddlers’ Green and your father while you haven’t been to the farm or got to know my uncle and aunt.’
    ‘They won’t want me there. I’d just be in the way in my chair.’
    ‘You sound much like I did when I knew I had to come and live with them. But there’s a sort of magic about the place. I can’t put it into words, it’s not that it’s elegant or beautiful, and they both work like Trojans all day long, but no one can feel