Discussion of the text. 1. Prove that the title and the subtitle create a tragic mood and the events are described in retrospect

1. Prove that the title and the subtitle create a tragic mood and the events are described in retrospect.

2. The story opens with the description of ocean waves. Notice how the atmosphere of impending tragedy is created in the opening paragraph.

3. The reader is made to infer that all the four men on the boat realized that the catastrophe was inevitable. Think if their actions, thoughts and speech reveal it.

4. Instify that the boat was too small to win the battle.

5. Find details that testify to the nervous state of the crew.

6. Note the numerous repetition of the word “colour” throughout the whole text. What is the function of the repetition?

7. Try to prove that the cook, the oilmen and the correspondent still hoped to survive. Point out means that contribute to it.

8. Find evidence that tension and suspense mount gradually in the text.

9. Find cases of the author’s opinion of the coming catastrophe. Do they add to the atmosphere of suspense?

10. Though the characters are not judged by the author their characteristic can be assembled from their actions, thoughts and remarks. Who of them does the author’s sympathy lie with?

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL TO BE USED

FOR INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS

 

 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

 

A Day's Wait*

He came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move.

«What's the matter, Schatz?»

«I've got a headache.»

«You better go back to bed.»

«No. I'm all right. »

«You go to bed. I'll see you when I'm dressed.»

But when I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the fire, looking a very sick and miserable boy of nine years. When I put my hand on his forehead I knew he had a fever.

« You go up to bed,» I said, «you're sick.»

« I'm all right,» he said.

When the doctor came he took the boy's temperature.

«What is it?» I asked him.

«One hundred and two.»

Downstairs, the doctor left three different medicines in different colored capsules with instructions for giving them. One was to bring down the fever, another a purgative, the third to overcome an acid condition. The germs of influenza can only exist in an acid condition, be explained. He seemed to know all about influenza and said there was nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above one hundred and four degrees. This was a light epidemic of flu and there was no danger if you avoided pneumonia.

Back in the room I wrote the boy's temperature down and made a note of the time to give the various capsules.

«Do you want me to read to you?»

«All right. If you want to,» said the boy. His face was very white and there were dark areas under his eyes. He lay still in the bed and seemed very detached from what was going on.

I read aloud from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates; but I could see he was not following what I was reading.

«How do you feel, Schatz?» I asked him.

«Just the same, so far,» he said.

I sat at the foot of the bed and read to myself while I waited for it to be time to give another capsule. It would have been natural for him to go to sleep, but when I looked up he was looking at the foot of the bed, looking very strangely. «Why don't you try to go to sleep? I'll wake you up for the medicine. »

«I'd rather stay awake.»

After a while he said to me, «You don't have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you.»

«It doesn't bother me.»

«No, I mean you don't have to stay if it's going to bother you.»

I thought perhaps he was a little lightheaded and after giving him the prescribed capsules at eleven o'clock I went out for a while.

It was a bright, cold day, the ground covered with a sleet that had frozen so that it seemed as if all the bare trees, the bushes, the cut brush and all the grass and the bare ground had been varnished with ice. I took the young Irish setter for a little walk up the road and along a frozen creek, but it was difficult to stand or walk on the glassy surface and the red dog slipped and slithered and I fell twice, hard, once dropping my gun and having it slide away over the ice.

We flushed a covey of quail under a high clay bank with overhanging brush and I killed two as they went out of sight over the top of the bank. Some of the covey lit in trees, but most of them scattered into brush piles and it was necessary to jump on the ice-coated mounds of brush several times before they would flush. Coming out while you were poised unsteadily on the icy, springy brush they made difficult shooting and I killed two, missed five, and started back pleased to have found a covey close to the house and happy there were so many left to find on another day.

At the house they said the boy had refused to let any one come into the room.

«You can't come in,» he said. «You mustn't get what I have. »

I went up to him and found him in exactly the position I had left him, white-faced, but with the tops of his cheeks flushed by the fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed.

I took his temperature.

«What is it?»

«Something like a hundred, » I said. It was one hundred and two and four tenths.

«It was a hundred and two,» he said.

«Who said so?»

«The doctor. »

«Your temperature is all right,» I said. «It's nothing to worry about»

«I don't worry, »he said, «but I can't keep from thinking. »

«Don't think, » I said. «Just take it easy. »

«I'm taking it easy, » he said and looked straight ahead. He was evidently holding tight onto himself about something.

«Take this with water. »

«Do you think it will do any good?»

«Of course it will. »

I sat down and opened the Pirate book and commenced to read, but I could see he was not following, so I stopped.

«About what time do you think I'm going to die?» he asked.

«What? »

«About how long will it be before I die? »

«You aren't going to die. What's the matter with you'?»

«Oh, yes, I am. I heard him say a hundred and two. »

«People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two. That’s a silly way to talk. »

«I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can’t live with forty-four degrees. I've got a hundred and two. »

He had been waiting to die all day, ever since nine o'clock in the morning.

«You poor Schatz, » I said. «Poor old Schatz It's like miles and kilometers. You aren't going to die. That's a different thermometer. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. On this kind it's ninety-eight. »

«Are you sure?»

«Absolutely, » I said. «It's like miles and kilometers. You know, like how many kilometers we make when we do seventy miles in the car?»

«Oh,» he said.

But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too, finally, and the next day it was very slack and he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance.

 

*Hemingway E. Selected Stories. Moscow, 1981, pp. 227-230.

 

 

JEROME K. JEROME

 

Three Men in a Boat*

 

There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were -bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary dung, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of«premonitory symptoms», it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it (1).

I sat for a while frozen with horror; and then in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee (2).

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a son of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis (3) I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to «walk the hospitals» if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy: man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. «What a doctor wants, » I said, «is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.» So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:

«Well, what's the matter with you?»

I said:

«I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got. »

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn't keep it

I said:

«You are a chemist? »

He said:

«I am a chemist If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me»

I read the prescription. It ran:

«1 lb, beefsteak, with

1 pt. bitter beer every six hours,

1 ten-mile walk every morning.

1 bed at 11 sharp every night

And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand. »

I followed the directions, with the happy result -speaking for myself that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

 

*Jerome J.K. Three Men in a Boat. Moscow: Higher School, 1976, pp. 8-10.

 

Notes

(1) It was born in upon me that I had fairly got it - I was convinced that I had undoubtedly got it

(2) housemaid's knee (med.) -a swelling of the knee, so called because frequently occurring in servant girls who work much upon their knees.

(3) zymosis - an infectious disease.

 

 

S.MAUGHAM

Mr. Know-All*

 

Ramsay was in the American Consular Service, and was stationed at Kobe. He was a great fellow from the Middle West, with loose fat under a tight skin, and he bulged out of his ready-made clothes. He was on his way back to resume his post, having been on a flying visit to New York to fetch his wife, who had been spending a year at home. Mrs. Ramsay was a very pretty little thing, with pleasant manners and a sense of humour. The Consular Service is ill paid, and she was dressed always very simply; but she knew how to wear her clothes. She achieved an effect of quiet distinction. I should not have paid any particular attention to her but that she possessed a quality that may be common enough in women, but nowadays is not obvious in their demeanour. You could not look at her without being struck by her modesty. It shone in her like a flower on a coat.

One evening at dinner the conversation by chance drifted to the subject of pearls. There had been in the papers a good deal of talk about the culture pearls which the cunning Japanese were making, and the doctor remar­ked that they must inevitably diminish the value of real ones. They were very good already; they would soon be perfect. Mr. Kelada, as was his habit, rushed the new topic. He told us all that was to be known about pearls. I do not believe Ramsay knew anything about them at all, but he could not resist the opportunity to have a fling at the Levantine, and in five minutes we were in the middle of a heated argument. I had seen Mr. Kelada vehement and voluble before, but never so voluble and vehement as now. At last something that Ramsay said stung him, for he thumped the table and shouted:

«Well, I ought to know what I am talking about. I'm going to Japan just to look into this Japanese pearl business. I'm in the trade and there's not a man in it who won't tell you that what I say about pearls goes. I know all the best pearls in the world, and what I don't know about pearls isn't worth knowing. » Here was news for us, for Mr. Kelada, with all his loquacity, had never told anyone what his business was. We only knew vaguely that he was going to Japan on some commercial errand. He looked round the table triumphantly.

«They'll never be able to get a culture pearl that an expert like me can't tell with half an eye» He pointed to a chain that Mrs. Ramsay wore. «You take my word for it, Mrs. Ramsay, that chain you're wearing will never be worth a cent less than it is now».

Mrs. Ramsay in her modest way flushed a little and slipped the chain inside her dress. Ramsay leaned forward. He gave us all a look and a smile flickered in his eyes.

«That's a pretty chain of Mrs. Ramsay's, isn't it?».

«I noticed it at once», answered Mr. Kelada. «Gee, I said to myself, those are pearls all right.»

«I didn't buy it myself, of course. I'd be interested to know how much you think it cost»

«Oh, in the trade somewhere round fifteen thousand dollars. But if it was bought on Fifth Avenue I shouldn't be surprised to hear anything up to thirty thousand was paid for it»

Ramsay smiled grimly.

«You'll be surprised to hear that Mrs. Ramsay bought that string at a department store the day before we left New York, for eighteen dollars. »

Mr. Kelada flushed.

«Rot. It's not only real, but it's as fine a string for its size as I've ever seen. »

«Will you bet on it? I’ll bet you a hundred dollars it's imitation. »

«Done. »

«Oh, Elmer, you can't bet on a certainty, » said Mrs. Ramsay. She had a little smile on her lips and her tone was gently deprecating.

«Can't I? If I get a chance of easy money like that I should be all sorts of a fool not to take it. »

«But how can it be proved? » she continued. «It's only my word against Mr. Kelada's.»

«Let me look at the chain, and if it's imitation I'll tell you quickly enough. I can afford to lose a hundred dollars, » said Mr. Kelada.

«Take it off, dear. Let the gentleman look at it as much as he wants. »

Mrs. Ramsay hesitated a moment She put her hands to the clasp.

«I can't undo it,» she said. «Mr. Kelada will just have to take my word for it»

I had a sudden suspicion that something unfortunate was about to occur, but I could think of nothing to say.

Ramsay jumped up.

«I’ll undo it»

He handed the chain to Mr. Kelada. The Levantine took a magnifying glass from his pocket and closely examined it. A smile of triumphs spread over his smooth and swarthy face. He handed back the chain. He was about to speak. Suddenly he caught sight of Mrs. Ramsay's face. It was so white that she looked as though she were about to faint. She was staring at him with wide and terrified eyes. They held a desperate appeal; it was so clear that I wondered why her husband did not see it.

Mr. Kelada stopped with his mouth open. He flushed deeply. You could almost see the effort he was making over himself.

«I was mistaken, » he said. «It is a very good imitation, but of course as soon as I looked through my glass I saw that it wasn't real. I think eighteen dollars is just about as much as the damned thing's worth. »

He took out his pocket-book and from it a hundred-dollar note. He handed it to Ramsay without a word.

«Perhaps that'll teach you not to be so cocksure another time, my young friend», said Ramsay as he took the note.

I noticed that Mr. Kelada's hands were trembling.

The story spread over the ship as stories do, and he had to put up with a good deal of chaff that evening. It was a fine joke that Mr. Know-All had been caught out. But Mrs. Ramsay retired to her state-room with a head-ache.

Next morning I got up and began to shave. Mr. Kelada lay on his bed smoking a cigarette. Suddenly there was a small scraping sound and I saw a letter pushed under the door. I opened the door and looked out. There was nobody there. I picked the letter and saw it was addressed to Max Kelada. The name was written in block letters. I handed it to him.

He took out of the envelope, not a letter, but a hundred-dollar note. He looked at me and again he reddened. He tore the envelope into little bits and gave them to me.

«Do you mind just throwing them out of the porthole?»

I did as he asked, and then I looked at him with a smile.

«No one likes being made to look a perfect damned fool», he said.

«Were the pearls real?»

«If I had a pretty little wife I shouldn't let her spend a year in New York while I stayed at Kobe», said he.

At that moment I did not entirely dislike Mr. Kelada. He reached out for his pocket-book and carefully put in it the hundred-dollar note.

 

*Maugham, S. Stories. Leningrad, 1976, pp. 9-13.

 

 

S.MAUGHAM

The Unconquered*

 

The events take place in France during World War II. Hans, a German soldier, rapes a French girl, Annette. Filled with remorse, he visits the girl regularly and brings to her stockings, ham, cheese, sugar, coffee...

Finally he falls in love with her. But she remains hostile and never speaks with him. When Hans learns that Annette is pregnant, he decides to marry her. Annette refuses him. She doesn’t want to have a baby: it will be a reproach to her as long as she lives.

 

It was now March. There was a bustle of activity in the garrison at Soissons. There were inspections and there was intensive training. Rumour was rife. There was no doubt they were going somewhere, but the rank and file could only guess where. Some thought they were being got ready at last for the invasion of England, others were of opinion that they would be sent to the Balkans, and others again talked of the Ukraine. Hans was kept busy. It was not till the second Sunday afternoon that he was able to get out to the farm. It was a cold grey day, with sleet that looked as though it might turn to snow falling in sudden windy flurries. The country was grim and cheerless.

«You!» cried Madame Perier when he went in. «We thought you were dead.»

«I couldn't come before. We're off any day now. We don’t know when.»

«The baby was born this morning. It's a boy.»

Hans's heart gave a great leap in his breast. He hung his arms round the old woman and kissed her on both cheeks.

«A Sunday child, he ought to be lucky. Let's open the bottle of champagne. How's Annette?»

«She's as well as can be expected. She had a very easy time. She began to have pains last night and by five o'clock this morning it was all over.»

Old Perier was smoking his pipe sitting as near the stove as he could get. He smiled quietly at the boy's enthusiasm.

«One's first child, it has an effect on one,» he said.

«He has quite a lot of hair and it's as fair as yours; and blue eyes just like you said he'd have,» said Madame Perier. «I’ve never seen a lovelier baby. He'll be just like his papa.»

«Oh, my God, I'm so happy,» cried Hans. «How beautiful the world is! I want to see Annette.»

«I don't know if she'll see you. I don't want to upset her on account of the milk.»

«No, no, don't upset her on my account. If she doesn’t want to see me it doesn't matter. But let me see the baby just for a minute.»

«I'll see what I can do. I'll try to bring it down.»

Madame Perier went out and they heard her heavy tread clumping up the stairs. But in a moment they heard her clattering down again. She burst into the kitchen.

«They're not there. She isn't in her room. The baby's gone.»

Perier and Hans cried out and without thinking what they were doing all three of them scampered upstairs. The harsh light of the winter afternoon cast over, the shabby furniture, the iron bed, the cheap wardrobe, the chest of drawers, a dismal squalor. There was no one in the room.

«Where is she?» screamed Madame Perier. She ran into the narrow passage, opening doors, and called the girl's name. «Annette, Annette. Oh, what madness!»

«Perhaps in the sitting-room.»

They ran downstairs to the unused parlour. An icy air met them as they opened the door. They opened the door of a storeroom.

«She's gone out. Something awful has happened. »

«How could she have got out?» asked Hans sick with anxiety.

«Through the front door, you fool». Perier went up to it and looked.

«That's right. The bolt's drawn back.»

«Oh, my God, my God, what madness,» cried Madame Perier. «It’ll kill her».

«We must look for her, » said Hans. Instinctively, because that was the way he always went in and out, he ran back into the kitchen and the others followed him.

«Which way?»

«The brook,» the old woman gasped.

He stopped as though turned to stone with horror. He stared at the old woman aghast.

«I'm frightened, » she cried. «I'm frightened. »

Hans flung open the door, and as he did so Annette walked in. She had nothing on but her nightdress and a flimsy rayon dressing-gown. It was pink, with pale blue flowers. She was soaked, and her hair dishevelled, clung damply to her head and hung down her shoulders in bedraggled wisps. She was deathly white. Madame Perier sprang towards her and took her in her arms.

«Where have you been? Oh, my poor child, you're wet through. What madness! »

Bat Annette pushed her away. She looked at Hans.

«You've come at the right moment, you.»

«Where's the baby?» cried Madame Perier.

«I had to do it at once. I was afraid if I waited I shouldn't have the courage.»

«Annette, what have you done?»

«I've done what I had to do. I took it down to the brook and held it under water till it was dead. »

Hans gave a great cry, the cry of an animal wounded to death; he covered his face with his hands, and staggering like a drunken man flung out of the door. Annette sank into a chair, and leaning her forehead on her two fists burst into passionate weeping.

 

*Maugham, S. Stories. Leningrad, 1976, pp. 64-66.

 

NIGEL KNEALE

 

The Putting Away (1)

of Uncle Quaggin*

Erza Quaggin died in June 1897. Before be died he had told Tom-Billy Teare, who was married to the old man's niece, that he had made his will and left it in a black box on top of the kitchen dresser. Tom-Billy was happy: the man had left the farm itself. But on the day of the funeral there appeared Ezra Quaggin's cousin called Lawyer Quaggin. When dinner was served Tom-Billy noticed that Lawyer Quaggin's place was empty.

 

Once the door was safely shut behind him, he ran the few steps to the kitchen. He pulled a stool up beside the dresser, climbed on to it, and clutched the tin deed-box down from its place. A bead of sweat fogged his eye as he opened the lid.

The-heart folded up inside him, and he grasped a shelf for support.

Ezra's will had gone!

He stumbled down, and scattered across the table all the contents of the box. The loose papers, the prayer-book, the letters. He swayed as the empty black bottom of the tin stared back at him. A moment later an old chair's wicker seat split under his sudden weight.

Like scalding steam, a stream of explosive hissing curses reddened his face. Then the remembered need for silence bottled up his fury, and drove it into his head and muddled his thoughts. They took several minutes to clear.

It was Lawyer all right! He must have found out the will's hiding-place by spying through the kitchen window during the funeral. And now he had stolen it; the guilt was there on his face when he sneaked back into the parlour just now.

Tom-Billy sat trying to control himself and picture the next move.

The other room was full of Quaggins waiting to hear the thing read. If he showed the empty box, they would rend him, the keeper of it. Useless to protest that Sallie had been left everything; each man jack of them would fancy himself cheated out of a huge legacy.

Go in there and denounce the thief? No, that was as bad. Lawyer would be ready, knowing the Quaggins distrusted him nearly as much as they did Tom-Billy. He would have the will hidden somewhere, and brazenly deny everything. And later, in his own crafty time, he would tell the Quaggins in secret what it said.

Either way, the will would never be seen again. The farm would be divided amongst the whole brood.

Tom-Billy groaned with anguish.

Something must be done immediately; he had no idea what. Often he bad wondered what a fattened beast felt when it sniffed the smell of slaughter. Now he knew, it prayed for the neighbourhood to be struck with catastrophe, to give it a chance of escape.

An earthquake. At least a whirlwind.

Words were dancing in front of his eyes. «All your problems solved, » they read. He tried to blink them away like liver-spots, but they persisted. They seemed to be printed on a packet lying by the wall. A little more cold sweat formed on his face.

He rose. He approached the improbable packet.

«Vesuvius Brand Lighters (2)». All your firelighting problems solved! » he read. So he still had his senses. His pulse slackened. He had been tricked by the crumpled label.

A bag of patent things that Sallie must have bought; old Quaggin would have died of cold before spending money on them. «Vesuvius Brand.» There was a clumsy little picture of people in long nightshirts running about clutching bundles and boxes, and a flaming mountain in the background. He slowly picked up the smelly packet. A desperate idea was coming. The most desperate he had ever had.

He pulled the split wicker-chair into the middle of the room and stacked the firelighters carefully upon it. Five of them the packet held. Quickly he added crushed newspapers, some greasy cleaning rags he found in a cupboard, and two meal sacks. The old stool and table he arranged close to the chair, in natural positions. A jarful of rendered fat completed the preparations.

He replaced the scattered papers in their tin box, and put it exactly where it belonged, up on top of the dresser. In fearful haste now, dreading that somebody would come to look for him, Tom-Billy struck a match and put it to the tarry shavings. The flame crept over the problem-solving lighters.

As he closed the kitchen door behind him, he began to count slowly.

One, two, three ...

He wiped the sweat from his face. At about a hundred it should be safe to raise the alarm.

 

*Kneale, N. The Putting Away of Uncle Quaggin: Stories by Modern English Authors. Moscow, 1961, pp. 86-88.

 

Notes

 

(1) putting away - funeral (dial.).

(2) Vesuvius Brand - the trade-mark of lighters.

O.HENRY

 

The Cop and the Anthem*

On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.

A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.

Soapy's mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigor. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.

The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies or drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable.

For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which, though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs.

Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then, after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest.

Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the protoplasm.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing - with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demitasse and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from cafe management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge.

But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the side-walk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of.

At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.

«Where's the man that done that?» inquired the officer, excitedly.

«Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?» said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune.

The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man halfway down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined to the pursuit Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers.

«Now, get busy and call a cop,» said Soapy. «And don't keep a gentleman waiting. »

«No cop for youse, » said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. «Hey, Con!»

Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens; and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street.

 

*Henry O. Selected Stories. Moscow: Progress, 1977, pp. 37-40.

 

 

HARPER LEE

To Kill a Mockingbird*

The town of Maycomb where the events take place is a typical little town of a Southern state.

The lawyer, Atticus Finch, left by the death of his wife in charge of a son Jem and a daughter Jean Louise (nicknamed Scout) allows them to grow free and unrestrained teaching them to decide most things for themselves. But he himself sets a good example to the children, for he is not only tolerant but humane and extremely decent. And their loyalty to Atticus is rooted in respect for his character as much as in affection for him as a father.

The crisis comes when Atticus makes up his mind to defend in court a Negro, who had been unjustly accused of raping and beating up a white woman. On the eve of the trial the Negro is brought to the Maycomb jail, and Atticus being aware of the mood of some of the whites and of possible violence sits on guard at the door of the jail, blocking the door with his body.

 

... Atticus said that they'd moved Tom Robinson to the Maycomb jail.

After our meal Jem and I were settling down to a routine evening, when Atticus did something that interested us: he came into the living-room carrying a long electrical extension cord. There was a light bulb on the end.

«I’m going out for a while», he said. «You folks'll be in bed when I come back, so I'll say good night now».

With that, he put his hat on and went out of the back door.

«He's takin' the car», said Jem.

Later on, I bade my aunt and brother good night and was well into a book when I heard Jem rattling around in his room. His go-to-bed noises were so familiar to me that I knocked on his door: «Why ain’t you going to bed?»

«I’m goin’ downtown for a while». He was changing his pants.

«Why? It's almost ten o'clock, Jem».

He knew it, but he was going anyway.

«Then I'm goin' with you. If you say no you're not, I'm goin' anyway, hear?»

Jem saw that he would have to fight me to keep me home, so he gave in with little grace.

I dressed quickly. We waited until Aunty's light went out, and we walked quietly down the back steps. There was no moon tonight.

«Dill’ll wanta come, » I whispered.

«So he will», said Jem gloomily.

We went to Dill's window. Jem whistled. Dill's face appeared, disappeared, and five minutes later he crawled out. An old campaigner, he did not speak until we were on the sidewalk. «What's up?»

«I've just got this feeling,» Jem said, «just this feeling»…

Atticus's office was in the Maycomb Bank building. When we rounded the corner of the square, we saw the car parked in front of the bank.

«He's in there,» said Jem.

But he wasn't. Jem peered in the bank door to make sure. He turned the knob. The door was locked. «Let's go up the street»…

As we walked up the sidewalk, we saw a solitary light burning in the distance. «That's funny, » said Jem, «jail doesn't have an outside light.»

«Looks like it's over the door,» said Dill.

A long extension cord ran between the bars of a second-floor window and down the side of the building. In the light from its bare bulb, Atticus was sitting propped against the front door. He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his head.

I made to run, but Jem caught me. «Don’t go to him,» he said, «he might not like it. He's all right, let's go home. I just wanted to see where he was.»

We were taking a short cut across the square when four dusty cars came in from the Meridian highway, moving slowly in a line. They went around the square, passed the bank building, and stopped in front of the jail.

Nobody got out. We saw Atticus look up from his newspaper. He closed it, folded it deliberately, dropped it in his lap, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. He seemed to be expecting them.

«Come on,» whispered Jem, «we can get closer.»

In ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows became substance as light revealed shapes moving towards the jail door. Atticus remained where he was. The men hid him from view.

«He is there, Mr. Finch?» a man said.

«He is,» we heard Atticus answer, «and he's asleep. Don't wake him up.»

In obedience to my father, there followed what I later realized was a sickeningly comic aspect of an unfunny situation: the men talked in near-whispers.

«You know what we want,» another man said. «Get aside from the door, Mr. Finch. »

This was too good to miss. I broke away from Jem and ran as fast as I could to Atticus.

Jem shrieked and tried to catch me, but I pushed my way through dark smelly bodies and burst into the circle of light.

«H-ey, Atticus!»

I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy. A flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes, but returned when Dill and Jem wriggled into the light.

There was a smell of stale whisky and pigpen about, and when I glanced around I discovered that these men were strangers. Hot embarrassment shot through me: I had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I had never seen before.

Atticus got up from his chair, but he was moving slowly, like an old man. He put the newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creases with lingering fingers. They were trembling a little.

«Go home, Jem,» he said. «Take Scout and Dill home.»

We were accustomed to prompt, if not always cheerful acquiescence to Atticus's instructions, but from the way he stood Jem was not thinking of budging.

«Go home,» I said.

Jem shook his head. As Atticus's fists went to his hips, so did Jem's, and as they faced each other I could see little resemblance between them, but they were somehow alike. Mutual defiance made them alike.

«Son, I said go home.»

Jem shook his head.

«I'll send him home,» a burly man said, and grabbed Jem roughly by the collar.

«Don't you touch him!» I kicked the man swiftly. Barefooted, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain.

«That'll do, Scout. » Atticus put his hand on my shoulder. «Don't kick folks. »

«All right, Mr. Finch, get'em outa here,» someone growled. «You got fifteen seconds to get'em outa here.»

In the midst of this strange assembly, Atticus stood trying to make Jem mind him. «I ain't' going,» was his steady answer to Atticus's threats, requests, and finally, «Please Jem, take them home.»

I was getting a bit tired of that, but felt Jem had his own reasons for doing as he did, in view of his prospects once Atticus did get him home. I looked around the crowd. It was a summer's night, but the men were dressed, most of them, in overalls and denim shirts buttoned up to the collars. Some wore hats pulled firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours. I sought once more for a familiar face, and at the centre of the semi-circle I found one.

«Hey, Mr. Cunningham.»

The man did not hear me, it seemed.

«Hey, Mr. Cunningham.» The big man blinked. He seemed uncomfortable; he cleared his throat and looked away. My friendly overture had fallen flat.

«Don't you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?» I began to sense the futility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.

«I go to school with Walter,» I began again. «He's your boy, ain't he? Ain't he, sir?»

Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.

«He's in my grade,» I said, «and he does right well. He's a good boy,» I added, «a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it Tell him hey for me, won’t you?» ... I slowly awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire aggregation. The men were all looking at me, some had their mouths half-open...

I began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I could stand anything but a bunch of people looking at me. They were quite still.

«What's the matter?» I asked.

Atticus said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr. Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders.

«I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,» he said.

Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. «Let’s clear out,» he called. «Let’s get going, boys.»

As they had come, in ones and twos the men shuffled back to their ramshackle cars. Doors slammed, engines coughed, and they were gone.

I turned to Atticus, but Atticus had gone to the jail and was leaning against it with his face to the wall. 1 went to him and pulled his sleeve. «Can we go home now?» He nodded, produced his handkerchief, gave his face a going-over and blew his nose violently.

«Mr. Finch?»

A soft husky voice came from the darkness above: «They gone?» Atticus stepped back and looked up. «They've gone,» he said. «Get some sleep, Tom. They won't bother you any more.»

 

*Levina. English for Advanced Students. Moscow, 1968, pp. 60-63.

 

WILLIAM SAROYAN

The Faraway Night*

This was a day of fog and remembrance of old days and old songs. I sat in the house all afternoon listening to the songs. It was darker everywhere than light and I remembered a song I sang to a girl on a bus once. For a while there we were in love, but when the bus reached Topeka she got off and I never saw her again. In the middle of the night when I kissed her she began to cry and I got sick with the sickness of love. That was a young night in August, and I was on my way to New York for the first time in my life. I got sick because I was going my way and she was going hers.

All this day of fog I sat in the house remembering the way a man's life goes one way and all the other lives another, each of them going its own way, and a certain number of young people dying all the time. A certain number of them going along and dying. If you don't see them again they are dead even if it is a small world: even if you go back and look for each of them and find them you find them dead because any way any of them go is a way that kills.

The bus came to Topeka and she got off and walked around a corner and I never saw her again. I saw many others, many of them as lovely as she, but never another like her, never another with that sadness and loveliness of voice, and never another who wept as she wept. There never will be another with her sadness. There never will be an American night like that again. She herself may be lovelier now than then but there will never be another sadness of night like that and never again will she or anyone else weep that way and no man who kisses her will grow sick with the sickness of the love of that night. All of it belongs to a night in America which is lost and can never be found. All of it belongs to the centuries of small accidents, all trivial, all insignificant, which brought her to the seat beside me, and all the small accidents which placed me there, waiting for her.

She came and sat beside me, and I knew the waiting of all the years had been for her, but when she got off the bus in Topeka I stayed on and three days later I reached New York.

That's all that happened except that something of myself is still there in that warm, faraway, American night.

When the darkness of day became the darkness of night I put on my hat and left the house. I walked through the fog to the city, my heart following me like a big patient dog, and in the city I found some of the dead who are my friends, and in laughter more deathly and grievous than the bitterest weeping we ate and drank and talked and sang and all that I remembered was the loveliness of her weeping because the years of small accidents had brought us together, and the foolishness of my heart telling me to stay with her and go nowhere, telling me there was nowhere to go.

 

*Saroyan, W. Selected Short Stories. Moscow, 1975, pp.241-243.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

Adventure*

 

Alice Hindman, a woman of twenty-seven when George Williard was a mere boy, had lived in Winesburg all her life. She clerked in Winney's Dry Goods Store and lived with her mother, who had married a second husband.

Alice's step-father was a carriage painter, and given to drink. His story is an odd one. It will be worth telling some day.

At twenty-seven Alice was tall and somewhat slight. Her head was large and overshadowed her body. Her shoulders were a little stooped and her hair and eyes brown. She was very quiet but beneath a placid exterior a continual ferment went on.

When she was a girl of sixteen and before she began to work in the store, Alice had an affair with a young man. The young man, named Ned Currie, was older than Alice. He, like George Willard, was employed on the Winesburg Eagle and for a long time he went to see Alice almost every evening. Together the two walked under the trees through the streets of the town and talked of what they would do with their lives. Alice was then a very pretty girl and Ned Currie took her into his arms and kissed her. He became excited and said things he did not intend to say and Alice, betrayed by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life, also grew excited. She also talked. The outer crust of her life, all of her natural diffidence and reserve, was torn away and she gave herself over to the emotions of love. When, late in the fall of her sixteenth year, Ned Currie went away to Cleveland where he hoped to get a place on a city newspaper and rise in the world, she wanted to go with him. With a trembling voice she told him what was in her mind. «I will work and you can work,» she said. «I do not want to harness you to a needless expense that will prevent your making progress. Don’t marry me now. We will get along without that and we can be together. Even though we live in the same house no one will say anything. In the city we will be unknown and people will pay no attention to us.»

Ned Currie was puzzled by the determination and abandon of his sweetheart and was also deeply touched. He had wanted the girl to become his mistress but changed his mind. He wanted to protect and care for her. «You don't know what you're talking about,» he said sharply; «you may be sure I'll let you do no such thing. As soon as I get a good job I’ll come back. For the present you'll have to stay here. It's the only thing we can do.»

On the evening before he left Winesburg to take up his new life in the city, Ned Currie went to call on Alice. They walked about through the streets for an hour and then got a rig from Wesley Mover's lively and went for a drive in the country. The moon came up and they found themselves unable to talk. In his sadness the young man forgot the resolutions he had made regarding his conduct with the girl.

They got out of the buggy at a place where a long meadow ran down to the bank of Wine Creek and there in the dim light became lovers. When at midnight they returned to town they were both glad. It did not seem to them that anything that could happen in the future could blot out the wonder and beauty of the thing that had happened. «Now we will have to stick to each other, whatever happens we will have to do that,» Ned Currie said as he left the girl at her father's door.

The young newspaper man did not succeed in getting a place on a Cleveland paper and went west to Chicago. For a time he was lonely and wrote to Alice almost every day. Then he was caught up by the life of the city; he began to make friends and found new interests in life. In Chicago he boarded at a house where there were several women. One of them attracted his attention and he forgot Alice in Winesburg. At the end of a year he had stopped writing letters, and only once in a long time, when he was lonely or when he went into one of the city parks and saw the moon shining on the grass as it had shone that night on the meadow by Wine Creek, did he think of her at all.

In Winesburg the girl who had been loved grew to be a woman. When she was twenty-two years old her father, who owned a harness repair shop, died suddenly. The harness maker was an old soldier, and after a few months his wife received a widow's pension. She used the first money she got to buy a loom and became a weaver of carpets, and Alice got a place in Winney's store. For a number of years nothing could have induced her to believe that Ned Currie would not in the end return to her.

 

*Anderson S. Selected Short Stories. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981, pp. 82-84.

 

GEORGE SHEFFIELD

 

A Sad Story*

 

«You are the doctor, I suppose,» said Augustus Pokewhistle, smiling from his bed at the immense man who had arrived secretly while he slept. «It is kind of you to come, but I fear you cannot help me. However, as you are here, I will tell you, very shortly, what is wrong with me. I am an artist I paint pictures and I draw drawings…»

«But…».

«You are going to tell me that you are not interested in the story of my life, » Augustus laughed bitterly. «You are one of the soulless public, and it is of no importance to you if a clever young man should take to his bed in the height of his youth, never to rise again. But I suppose you have been sent here by some interfering so-called friend of mine to save me from the Silent Grave, and I must therefore explain my illness. And you cannot understand my illness unless I tell you the story of my life…»

«But...»

«I was delicately brought up, and it soon became clear that I was not an ordinary boy. At the age of seven I won a prize for a drawing of an animal. We will forget the fact that I had intended my drawing to represent Sunset over London. After that my proud parents provided me with plenty of pencils and paper and gave me the opportunity of studying under Great Painters. At the age of twenty-one I started business as a painter of people, and painted eleven pictures of my own face. Nobody seemed to want them, and if you will go into my sitting-room, you will see them hanging sadly on the wall, looking down at the Empty Chair which I will never sit in again. For I am certain that I shall never rise from this bed ...»

«But...»

«Nobody came to have their pictures painted, and I had no heart to paint any more of myself. Although it may seem impossible I could no longer get any real pleasure out of it after I had finished the eleventh, and this proves that one can get tired of even the most heavenly beauty ...»

«But…»

«May I mention that there is a certain sameness in your remarks? Let me finish, and then you can say “but” as often as you like. I turned from painting people to painting the country. Nine times I painted the view from the back window, and seven times I painted the view from the front window. But could I sell the seven pictures of the view from the front window, or the nine of the view from the back window? I could not. I had little money left, and I decided, after a severe struggle with myself, to forget my soul and paint for money. I determined to draw funny pictures for the newspapers. Remember that I was without hope and almost hungry, and do not think of me too severely... »

«But ...»

«I know what you are going to say - if I had had the soul of a true artist, I would have died rather than do such a thing. But remember that my wife and children were crying for bread -or would have been crying for bread if I had had a wife and children. And was it my fault that I hadn't a wife and little children? So I made thirty or forty funny drawings every day and sent them to the papers. I soon found that selling one's soul for money is not so easy as it sounds. Believe it or not, I got no money. I just got my drawings back…»

«But…»

«You may well ask why they were sent back. I cannot tell you. I tested them on the cat I had often heard the expression, funny enough to make a cat laugh! And so I placed them in a line and carried the cat along in front of them. He laughed until he was sick... in any case he was sick.

«Then I sank lower and lower. I tried drawing for advertisements. Clothes, pianos, bottles. Immensely tall ladies with foolish smiles. I sent them off by the hundred, and all I received was a sample bottle or two, and a Sample card of wool. I rather expected to get a Sample tall lady with a foolish smile, but probably she got lost in the post …»

«But...»

«So I gave up the struggle. My heart was broken, and I determined to take to my bed, never to rise again. You cannot help me, doctor. No skill of yours can help me feel it in my bones that I shall never rise from this bed…»

«And I feel it in my bones that you will,» said stranger, carefully placing Augustus Pokewhistle on the carpet, «because I've come to take it away. I’m from furniture shop, and the bed isn't paid for.»

 

*Shevtsova S.V. Modern Reading. Moscow, 1972, pp. 14-16.

 

 

ARNOLD BENNET

 

The Wind*

 

The vast stretch of lion-coloured sands; the stretch of tumbling grey sea; the still vaster stretch disordered grey-inky clouds which passed endlessly at great rate from west to east across the firmament; the wind; and one small bare-legged figure on the sands.

The wind had been blowing hard for days; it varied in strength from a stiffish breeze to half a gale; once or twice it had surprisingly gone right round to the east, and tin clouds had uncovered the sun, and the showers been briefer and fewer; but during the whole holiday the wind had never ceased. As soon as you arrived over the ridge of shingle on the beach, it assaulted you. There was no peace from it except in the lee of the tarry bathing-hut, sole edifice within sight, perched high on the shingle; and the instant you moved even a foot away from the shelter it assaulted you again with new power, and continued incessantly to assault you.

It may have been a healthy wind, but its effect on the nerves was evil. Mr. Frederick Lammond was keenly aware of its sinister influence on his nerves. Mr. Lammond stood where sand and shingle met, between the bathing-hut and the small figure approaching the sea's edge. Hearing a faint shriek from the hut, he turned.

«Look after the child!»

Across the hostile wind the words which had begun in a loud shriek from the lips of the half-undressed girl standing in the doorway of the hut reached him like a whisper.

The wind caused the end of the ribbon encircling insecure straw hat to vibrate with a noise like the hum of an insect's wings.

He waved a reassuring arm.

«Oh, d-n!» he muttered. «As if I hadn't got my eye on the kid the whole time!»

The infant was yet quite thirty yards off the water.

Mr. Lammond strolled after the infant with careful, callous deliberation.

The infant was the most expensive toy on earth. Her unconscious demands on Mr. Lammond's purse were enormous. She had meant a larger house (with all the expenses of removing and the wages of more servants) because she needed two entire rooms to herself, one for day, one for night. She had meant new furniture, new pictures (specially selected to attract and develop her youthful mind); a self-clicking gate at the top of the stairs; a succession of new toys; a succession of new clothes (for she grew day and night); a superb perambulator, whose wheels revolved on ball-bearings. Also the salary of a trained and certificated nurse, who save for half a day a week devoted her entire existence night and day to the welfare of the expensive toy. Then there was Grade A milk, which the infant seemed to drink in immoderate quantities, and various other costly foods.

And then there was the new motor car, with the chauffeur. Before the era of the infant the Lammonds had been happy with a trifling 7 h. p. run-about, which Frederick drove himself, and which even Edna herself occasionally drove. Edna, however, would not allow the life of «her» child to be risked in any run-about controlled by an amateur. Strange creature! She had not minded Frederick risking his own life, or hers. But the infant was as sacred as an Indian cow - and not more intelligent. Hence the chauffeur, and you could not decently put a chauffeur in a car of less than 20-40 h. p. Hence, further, liveries for the chauffeur, licence for the chauffeur, many meals for the chauffeur.

Frederick Lammond calculated, and loved to calculate, that his offspring cost him in all an extra thousand a year. He did not grudge the expense, for the profits of the wood trade were increasingly handsome; but be thought it was a lot, a tremendous lot, with little immediate re