..
working their way there.
After the burial Josh and Paul went on back to Halton, where they worked
in the Steel Mills. They left Aunt Rachel and Phoebe to stay on and pay
us a visit.
Paul and Josh were "puddlers"--when they worked ... in the open furnaces
that were in use in those days ... when you saw huge, magnificent men,
naked to the belt, whose muscles rippled in coils as they toiled away in
the midst of the living red of flowing metal.
* * * * *
Phoebe was wild and beautiful in a frail way. She wore a pea green skirt
and a waist of filmy, feminine texture. We instantly took to each other.
She was always up and off, skimming swallow-like in all directions, now
this way, now that, as if seeking for some new flavour in life, some
excitement that had not come to her yet.
We made expeditions together over the country. She joined me in my
imaginary battles with Indians ... my sanguinary hunts for big game....
It was she who first taught me to beg hand-outs at back doors--one day
when we went fishing together and found ourselves a long way off from
home.
Once Phoebe fell into a millpond from a springboard ... with all her
clothes on ... we were seeing who dared "teeter" nearest the end.... I
had difficulty in saving her. It was by the hair, with a chance clutch,
that I drew her ashore.
The picture of her, shivering forlornly before the kitchen stove! She
was beautiful, even in her long, wet, red-flannel drawers that came down
to her slim, white ankles.
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