Free The Girl From Penny Lane by Katie Flynn Page B

only joking!’
    But Lilac settled primly back in her seat and gazed out at the summer dusk and the hissing gas lamps on a level with the top deck. I won’t marry till I’m good and ready, she told herself crossly. And when I do it won’t be a bank clerk with a worn suit and cracked black shoes. That smart young ship’s officer, he’s more my style! I could see he liked me, and he came of a rich family, that house was full of good stuff.
    Then she thought about Nellie and her Stuart, who would be happy, she was sure, on a desert island sharing their last coconut between them. But she was different, she did so like her creature comforts, pretty dresses, money in her pocket, warm fires in winter and iced drinks in summer! She would find it very hard to settle for anything less than the sort of life she had grown to enjoy with the Mattesons. She doubted that she could be happy with anyone who didn’t have money and some sort of position, and Art really wasn’t cut out even for clerking in a bank. He’s rough, she told herself virtuously, and I’m not. Not now. And I won’t end up like Mrs O’Brien or the other women in Coronation Court – overworked, always hungry, fighting a losing battle against the filth, the vermin, their menfolk.
    Yet Nellie, whose life had been considerably harder than Lilac’s, would have followed Stuart to hell and back, barefoot. Lilac knew it as surely as she knew she drew breath.
    I’m made of weaker stuff, she thought sadly as the tram rumbled on. Even if I thought I loved . . . someone . . . which I don’t, I couldn’t marry just for love. I’m not strong, like Nellie.
    It was a curiously humbling thought.
    Kitty woke when the sun came up the next day. She had found a patch of long grass by the canal and since the night seemed fine and likely to remain so, she had curled up amongst the soft blades, not bothering with the dubious shelter of the bridge.
    Now she sat up, knuckled her eyes, and looked about her. A horse the size of an elephant was coming along the path towards her, towing a canal boat. It was a brightly painted boat with elaborate pictures all over it, and it towed in its turn another boat, the second one heavily laden with timber. There was a scruffy lad of about Kitty’s age balanced on the timber, steering with a long pole-like rudder, a little girl in a blue cotton dress was watering the big earthenware pots of tomatoes set out on the roof of the first boat, and a good smell of bacon cooking came wafting over the water to Kitty’s suddenly interested nose.
    The boy spotted her and raised a hand.
    ‘Marnin,’ lass, an’ a gradely one at that,’ he observed, in what Kitty considered a thick country accent. ‘Sleepin’ rough, art tha? I see thee in thy nest, earlier.’
    ‘Oh, I only come ’ere till me mam cools off,’ Kitty said hastily. ‘I’ll go ’ome to get me butties.’ But she fell into step beside the first boat, her nose pointing towards the bacon as though given the chance it would have leaped the gap and helped itself, if only to the rich and delicious smell.
    ‘We’m ’avin’ bacon,’ the little girl chimed in. She picked up a thick sandwich from the cabin roof and waved it in a friendly sort of way towards Kitty. She was a pretty child of six or seven, with curly fair hair and blue eyes. ’Tis only t’best for us, eh, Cally?’
    ‘That’s right,’ the boy agreed. ‘On a Sat’day, anyroad.’
    ‘I’ll likely get bacon too, when I goes ’ome,’ Kitty lied manfully. She swallowed. ‘Yours smells a treat,’ she added.
    The little girl looked back at the boat containing her brother. He obviously interpreted her glance for he said, ‘Go on, ’en.’ He turned to Kitty. ‘Wanna bite?’
    ‘I can’t tek your grub,’ Kitty began, but the little girl carefully put her watering can down on the roof of the boat, picked up her sandwich and held it out.
    ‘Oh, I can’t . . .’ Kitty began, then the smell reached her and