Читать книгу Lonely Road онлайн

53 страница из 56

She nodded, without laughing. “You’re too particular,” she said shrewdly. “There’s ever so many like you come and dance with us—you’d be surprised. There’s some that just don’t want to do anything but sit and talk for a bit. It’s like as if they don’t seem able to fancy the girl friends they can get, and can’t get the ones they fancy, and so they come here. It’s funny, isn’t it? My brother now, he’s just the same as you.”

I was watching an unpleasant youth dancing with an anæmic girl, an extraordinarily graceful pair. “What does he do?” I asked absently.

Evidently she was very proud of him. “He’s in the motor transport business. He’s got a lorry of his own. I hadn’t seen him for over three years, and I didn’t know where he was or anything, but he turned up here on Friday last week, and booked me out all Saturday, and we had a lovely time. They told him at home that I was here. He’s doing awfully well, down somewhere in the south. He takes carpet sweepers and things that come from abroad from the boats and drives them to the factory, or something. It’s all-night work.”