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

were a girl in a mantle shop, and she contemplated buying
either me or the mantle. At last, catching my eye, she
thought better of it, and burst out laughing.

'What do you mean by this eavesdropping?' she asked.

I flushed up in turn. 'This is a public place,' I
replied, with dignity; 'and you spoke in a tone which was
hardly designed for the strictest privacy. If you don't
wish to be overheard, you oughtn't to shout. Besides, I
desired to do you a service.'

The Cantankerous Old Lady regarded me once more from head
to foot. I did not quail. Then she turned to her
companion. 'The girl has spirit,' she remarked, in an
encouraging tone, as if she were discussing some absent
person. 'Upon my word, Amelia, I rather like the look of
her. Well, my good woman, what do you want to suggest to
me?'

'Merely this,' I replied, bridling up and crushing her.
'I am a Girton girl, an officer's daughter, no more a good
woman than most others of my class; and I have nothing in
particular to do for the moment. I don't object to going to
Schlangenbad. I would convoy you over, as companion, or a
lady-help, or anything else you choose to call it; I would
remain with you there for a week, till you could arrange
with your Gretchen, presumably unsophisticated; and then
would leave you. Salary is unimportant; my fare suffices.
I accept the chance as a cheap opportunity of attaining
Schlangenbad.'

The yellow-faced old lady put up her long-handled
tortoise-shell eyeglasses and inspected me all over again.
'Well, I declare,' she murmured. 'What are girls coming to,
wonder? Girton, you say; Girton! That place at Cambridge!
You speak Greek, of course; but how about German?'

'Like a native,' I answered, with cheerful promptitude.
'I was at school in Canton Berne; it is a mother tongue to
me'

'No, no,' the old lady went on, fixing her keen small eyes
on my mouth. 'Those little lips could never frame
themselves to "schlecht" or "wunderschon"; they were not cut
out for it.'

'Pardon me,' I answered, in German. 'What I say, that I
mean. The never-to-be-forgotten music of the
Fatherland's-speech has on my infant ear from the