Read Online High Tide at Noon by Elisabeth Ogilvie - Free Book Online Page B

thoughtfully at a lone spruce out on the point, his profile dark and somehow austere.
    â€œYour mother tells me I don’t know how to talk to a girl,” he said wryly. “Maybe so.”
    â€œYou do all right,” said Joanna with an appreciative grin.
    â€œThanks . . . well, what I want to say doesn’t take a lot of words.” He turned his head and looked down at her, his smile warm in his eyes. “Jo, I’m asking you to do something—something to help your mother and me.”
    â€œSure, what is it?”
    Stephen Bennett sighed, and Joanna’s fingers tightened around her ankles. All at once she knew what was coming.
    â€œI’ll be short about it,” he said. “It’s this. We don’t want you down around the shore any more. We’ve let you run with the boys and their crowd all over the Island, in and out of the boats, because we thought it was a child’s right to be free. But you’re not a child now.”
    Not a child, but a frantic thing, wild and protesting as the cage doors shut. . . . I didn’t know they’d do this! she thought passionately. They can’t! . . . And her father’s voice went steadily on.
    â€œYou’re too big to be running around in dungarees and hanging on the boys’ coattails. Remember when I sent you home yesterday? Well, a girl of your age always around the shore like that—it makes talk.”
    â€œTalk’s cheap!” she said violently. But it wasn’t magic any more, not against her father’s words.
    â€œMaybe, but it’s not the way of our family to go about asking talk to be made.” He sighed again. “Joanna, this is as hard for me as it is for you. But your mother and I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, and this latest mess—do you know about it?”
    â€œCharles told me.”
    He nodded. “Well, it’s foul enough, but it was bound to come, Jo, the way we’ve let you run free. It’s a sign. Sign you’re growing up. People seeing you as a girl, not just Steve Bennett’s kid.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to grow up!” The passionate words burst from her before she realized. “I wish something could happen to me so I’d stay a kid forever, if growing up means all this chew, and staying at home, and never having fun any more, just so they won’t talk about the Bennetts!”
    The compassion of his look brought the sting of tears to her eyelids. She was terribly ashamed. He stood up, and his big brown hand rumpled her hair affectionately.
    â€œJoanna, I don’t like telling you to stay home. It’s like putting a gull in a cage. But it was bound to come sometime. You couldn’t go on like that forever.”
    â€œI know it.” Her lips felt stiff. In a cage . Four walls. Already she felt them closing in on her, stealing her very breath. And against them rose the too-vivid picture of the beach in the pale morning sunlight, young gulls fighting over a dead fish, a dory pushing off, the shining light on the sea, the sparkling drops falling from the blades of an oar.
    Stephen was saying reasonably, “I don’t expect you to sit in the house all day. I’m just asking you to quiet down. Remember, you’re growing up, and you’re the only girl we have. Your mother worries enough about the boys—”
    â€œBut you can keep your girl home,” said Joanna, and by some miracle she smiled up at him.
    â€œYou’re a good girl, Jo,” he said, “You’re the finest kind.” He went by the lilac bushes and into the barn, where the shop was, and Joanna sat motionless on the doorstep. But there was nothing in her face that was unhappy or self-pitying. There were only narrow, dry eyes watching the splendid freedom of a gull’s flight, and a curiously level mouth; there was a steely acceptance that was not resignation in Joanna’s heart.
    I’ll stay