The Hamiltons of Ballydown Read Online Free

of that?’ asked Hugh, his voice barely concealing his excitement. ‘The new engine and him not turned sixteen. Are you not proud of him?’
    ‘I am, Hugh, I am,’ she nodded, tears springing to her eyes. ‘I can hardly believe he’s grown up so quickly,’ she said, trying to blink them away. ‘It’s just the smoke,’ she said feebly. ‘It makes my eyes water.’
    ‘Just wait till young Jamie launches his first ship,’ he said, nodding sympathetically and turning his head away to give her time to recover. ‘We’ll have to do better than a wall to stand on that day.’

CHAPTER TWO
    ‘What about a cup of tea or a glass of lemonade by way of celebration?’ Elizabeth asked, as she climbed down from the wall and turned to watch John swing Rose lightly to the ground beside her.
    Hugh ignored the ladder and slithered from the wall to land on his good leg. He smiled sheepishly across at his sister. ‘Sounds good, Elizabeth,’ he began, ‘but we’ve only just got to those drawings.’
    Elizabeth waved a hand in the air. ‘Well, it’s always polite to ask,’ she said, looking from Hugh to John. ‘A refusal never offends.’
    They all laughed. Almost every shop in Banbridge had a notice, handwritten or printed and clearly displayed behind the main counter, which said:
Please do not ask for credit, as a refusal often offends.
    ‘What about you, Rose?’
    ‘You know I love your lemonade,’ Rose replied, still laughing, ‘but I dashed off with the front door wide open and my baking things all over the table.’
    ‘And who do you think would steal your baking things, Rose?’ Hugh asked, his tone light and teasing.
    ‘No one at all, Hugh,’ she agreed, shaking her head. ‘I’m sure there hasn’t been a soul past the house all morning, but there
was
a jug of milk should’ve gone back to the dairy.
And
there’s bread in the oven,’ she added, finally remembering what was prompting her to go straight home. ‘But I’ll be up tomorrow, as we planned,’ she called over her shoulder, as she turned on her heel. ‘If I don’t have to bake more bread, that is.’
    She walked steadily along the lime avenue, grateful for the cool shade and the soothing murmur of myriads of insects at work in the green canopy above her head. The light dazzled her as she emerged from the leafy tunnel, but as she turned down the hill a whisper of breeze threw tendrils of hair gently across her perspiring forehead.
    She was grateful for the breeze. She still hadn’t quite recovered from trying to run uphill after Billy, her heart in her mouth, sure that something dreadful had happened to Sam. It ought to teach her a lesson not to assume the worst. Not to worry so much about her children, particularly when they weren’t children any more.
    They’d certainly seemed like children when they arrived at Ballydown. But each year since had brought such changes. James was a young man now, set outupon his own life in Belfast. ‘Little’ six-year-old Sarah was thirteen, a full two years older than the boys and girls who left school as soon as the law permitted to go and work in the mills.
    Perhaps all mothers worried about their children. Was it a habit that grew up when children were young and vulnerable and stayed with you when they became sons and daughters, well-grown and with every appearance of good health? Or was it the knowledge that life is perilous, that loss is part of life and simply has to be borne?
    So many children died young, not just stillborn infants, or babies who didn’t thrive, but lively young toddlers who caught whooping cough or diphtheria. Older children who died of tuberculosis. She’d heard of plenty of those as well as her own friend’s child. She would never forget Jane Wylie, only nine years old.
    She walked faster, her stride increasing with the thrust of her thoughts, her eyes searching the fields and hedgerows as if they had the answer to her questions. There were carpets of buttercups in the meadows,