Loving Daughters Read Online Free Page B

their roots, and it was as if the trees looking down drew comfort from this token of companionship and burst into blossom, then bore bright gold and pale yellow fruit and appeared like crowned royalty, ruling their subjects with a gentle hand, more by example than direction.
    Those who thought the trees out of place and Enid better employed inside the house, and said as much to Jack, changed their view as the garden developed into something close to a small, well-kept park.
    They praised the elder Herbert girl to soured wives immersed in motherhood and small, dirty houses. The wives’ envy turned to dislike of Enid as they waited darkly hopeful for her life to become a pattern of theirs.
    Enid watched the may bushes toss their heads about above a bank of salvia, losing its fiery red to the approaching dusk, and a border of white daisies, their navy blue centres no more than a blurred hole.
    Yes, I am pleased with you, she said to herself, feeling the tightness around her heart melt like a dish of butter on a hot window sill.
    She turned to see Una, binding an old shawl to her shoulders with tightly folded arms, slip through the hall and pass out the back door, off walking to the old racecourse before tea. Well, let her go, Enid thought, taking a stack of plates to warm by the stove. She saw her garden again glancing sideways from the dresser. She hasn’t got what I have.
    But she did not know which was the stronger emotion, pity or triumph.
    Two weeks later Edwards came.

6
    A legacy from a bachelor who grew up in Wyndham and later became a successful seed merchant in Bega brought Colin Edwards to the church and rectory of St Jude’s
    There was no resident minister during the war years, a man coming from Candelo or Bega once a month to take a service.
    The seed man left the legacy for the appointment of a minister to St Jude’s, and the sum covered a single man’s stipend for two years.
    It was considered providential by the Bega Parish Council that Edwards was available, his arrival in Australia known to one council member through a relative, a high-ranking Sydney churchman, with whom the member kept in touch, adding an aura to his own humble post.
    This was enhanced by taking Edwards in and boarding him for the few weeks spent in Bega adjusting to the new environment.
    Edwards came out from England with a shipload of returned soldiers at the end of 1919. He avoided large packs of diggers on the journey, conspicuous in his clerical dress among the khaki uniforms. It was the robust soldiers unmarked by the war who made spitting motions with their lips and snorting noises through elevated noses when close to him. Those on deck chairs with frail hands clutching sticks, and faces hardly less white than their abundant bandages, appeared humbly grateful when he sat by them to talk, although there were padres (in uniform like the soliders) who were carrying out counselling duties until the ship docked.
    (These he avoided too.)
    Edwards’s only brother James was lost in the war. He had risen to the rank of captain and died in Egypt. The event brought great stress and grief to the family, particularly the father in charge of the fashionable parish of Kensington.
    Colin had secretly believed he would be pleasing his father greatly by joining the church.
    But it was clearly James who was favoured. He studied law, took a degree then joined the Army at the outbreak of war. He died tipping from his horse, like a child playing war games.
    Colin, struggling with his studies at theological college, returned home to help ease his parents’ grief, or so he believed. When he walked between his father and his mother in the drawing room, his father ran cold eyes over him as if he were a stranger yet to be introduced whom he was sure he wouldn’t like.
    His mother turned her drowned eyes to the window to give him no view of her face, only her little plump hand holding a sodden handkerchief on her knee.
    His father