"Allen, Grant - Miss Cayley's Adventures 01 - The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Grant)

I paused and reflected. 'I am here in London,' I
answered, gazing rapt at the ceiling; London, whose streets
are paved with gold though it looks at first sight like
flagstones; London, the greatest and richest city in the
world, where an adventurous soul ought surely to find some
loophole for an adventure. (That piece is hung crooked,
dear; we shall have to take it down again.) I devise a
Plan, therefore. I submit myself to fate; or, if you prefer
it, I leave my future in the hands of Providence. I shall
stroll out this morning, as soon as I've "cleaned myself,"
and embrace the first stray enterprise that offers. Our
Bagdad teems with enchanted carpets. Let one but float my
way, and, hi, presto, I seize it. I go where glory or a
modest competence waits me. I snatch at the first offer,
the first hint of an opening.'

Elsie stared at me, more aghast and more puzzled than
ever. 'But, how?' she asked. 'Where? When? You are so
strange! What will you do to find one?'

'Put on my hat and walk out,' I answered. 'Nothing could
be simpler. This city bursts with enterprises and
surprises. Strangers from east and west hurry through it in
all directions. Omnibuses traverse it from end to end--
even, I am told, to Islington and Putney; within, folk sit
face to face who never saw one another before in their
lives, and who may never see one another again, or, on the
contrary, may pass the rest of their days together.'

I had a lovely harangue all pat in my head, in much the
same strain, on the infinite possibilities of entertaining
angels unawares, in cabs, on the Underground, in the aerated
bread shops; but Elsie's widening eyes of horror pulled me
up short like a hansom in Piccadilly when the inexorable
upturned hand of the policeman checks it. 'Oh, Brownie,'
she cried, drawing back, 'you don't mean to tell me you're
going to ask the first young man you meet in an omnibus to
marry you?'

I shrieked with laughter, 'Elsie,' I cried, kissing her
dear yellow little head, 'you are impayable. You never will
learn what I mean. You don't understand the language. No,
no; I am going out, simply in search of adventure. What
adventure may come, I have not at this moment the faintest
conception. The fun lies in the search, the uncertainty,
the toss-up of it. What is the good of being penniless--
with the trifling exception of twopence--unless you are
prepared to accept your position in the spirit of a masked
ball at Covent Garden?'