Francie Again Read Free Page B

like. It was not enough to see them, moving against the hills or harbors in their opera-chorus clothes, though all that was thrilling. What were they really like?
    It seemed hopeless that she should ever find out. Portugal, for an American girl living in a luxury hotel in Estoril, might as well be Florida. Those peasant girls in their black or red skirts and gold necklaces, those fishermen had their own lives and cared nothing for hers. As for the middle-class Portuguese, nobody ever got to know them—the English had told her so. It was no use trying; Francie was typed. She was merely one more of the foreigners who invaded the city and made it look like every city in the world.
    Francie began to swim back slowly to shore. Beyond the hotel, up a steep, stone-built bank, she saw the main highway to Lisbon. A few cars like shiny monsters whizzed past, high above her head. Farther back were the electric train tracks, and then came little villas, pink or green or cream, scattered among the hills. It was pretty and it was dull. Francie turned again to the sea, and for reassurance looked at the old fort that had stood there in the water for centuries.
    â€œI’d like to paint that,” she thought, “only I bet every single visitor does it.”
    The only thing to do, she decided as she left the water, was to make the best of it, enjoy her stay as much as possible in the ordinary, conventional way, and look forward to the future when Aunt Lolly would be well enough to go back to Paris. Release was bound to come sooner or later, she reflected. In the meantime, there were plenty of girls in Jefferson and New York who wouldn’t mind changing places with her. And that was putting it mildly.
    Thinking deeply, she walked as if in a dream across the hard-packed wet sand and then on the dry, looser stuff toward the place where she had left her towel and bathrobe. At least she assumed it was the same place; she wasn’t really thinking. At the back of her mind was a happy confidence that her clothes were the only ones on the beach. She picked up the white robe.
    â€œExcuse me,” said a gentle voice.
    Francie was realizing with embarrassment at the same moment that it wasn’t her robe at all. The towel and slippers lying underneath it were unfamiliar.
    â€œOh, sorry.”
    She looked up and saw a girl standing there smiling—a dark-haired girl, wearing a dark bathing suit and carrying her rubber cap in her hand, all wet and fresh from the sea. Beyond, Francie’s own clothes lay where she had left them.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter at all,” said the other girl. There was a touch of accent in her speech.
    â€œI thought they were mine, you see,” said Francie.
    â€œNaturally. Our wraps are the same,” said the girl. “And as we are the only people on the beach—”
    â€œBut I was stupid. I mean, I wasn’t really looking,” said Francie. It seemed to her that she had pretty well exhausted the subject, though she didn’t want to stop talking. Francie liked talking to people she encountered by herself, but in a foreign country like this she felt shy of pushing such a chance acquaintance. She was just moving on when the girl said quickly, as if to detain her,
    â€œThe water is good today, isn’t it? Not too warm.”
    So Francie sat down on the sand with her, and they talked.
    â€œI’ve made a friend,” Francie announced to Aunt Lolly. Her voice was full of triumphant excitement.
    â€œMy goodness. By yourself?” asked Mrs. Barclay. They were drinking lemonade instead of tea, in the dim coolness of the patient’s bedroom. Aunt Lolly usually spent most of the day quietly in bed.
    â€œBy myself, in the most unexpected way. She was swimming alone, the way I was. You see, Aunt Lolly, you and I were all wrong. She’s actually a young Portuguese girl, but she was all alone, just the same.”
    â€œI think it must be unusual,”