"Dickens, Charles - The Haunted Man And The Ghost's Bargain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

to be sure!" Here he turned the plate, and cooled his fingers.

"Well?" said Mr. Redlaw.

"That's just what I say myself, sir," returned Mr. William,
speaking over his shoulder, as if in ready and delighted assent.
"That's exactly where it is, sir! There ain't one of our students
but appears to regard Mrs. William in that light. Every day, right
through the course, they puts their heads into the Lodge, one after
another, and have all got something to tell her, or something to
ask her. 'Swidge' is the appellation by which they speak of Mrs.
William in general, among themselves, I'm told; but that's what I
say, sir. Better be called ever so far out of your name, if it's
done in real liking, than have it made ever so much of, and not
cared about! What's a name for? To know a person by. If Mrs.
William is known by something better than her name - I allude to
Mrs. William's qualities and disposition - never mind her name,
though it IS Swidger, by rights. Let 'em call her Swidge, Widge,
Bridge - Lord! London Bridge, Blackfriars, Chelsea, Putney,
Waterloo, or Hammersmith Suspension - if they like."

The close of this triumphant oration brought him and the plate to
the table, upon which he half laid and half dropped it, with a
lively sense of its being thoroughly heated, just as the subject of
his praises entered the room, bearing another tray and a lantern,
and followed by a venerable old man with long grey hair.

Mrs. William, like Mr. William, was a simple, innocent-looking
person, in whose smooth cheeks the cheerful red of her husband's
official waistcoat was very pleasantly repeated. But whereas Mr.
William's light hair stood on end all over his head, and seemed to
draw his eyes up with it in an excess of bustling readiness for
anything, the dark brown hair of Mrs. William was carefully
smoothed down, and waved away under a trim tidy cap, in the most
exact and quiet manner imaginable. Whereas Mr. William's very
trousers hitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it were not in
their iron-grey nature to rest without looking about them, Mrs.
William's neatly-flowered skirts - red and white, like her own
pretty face - were as composed and orderly, as if the very wind
that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one of their
folds. Whereas his coat had something of a fly-away and half-off
appearance about the collar and breast, her little bodice was so
placid and neat, that there should have been protection for her, in
it, had she needed any, with the roughest people. Who could have
had the heart to make so calm a bosom swell with grief, or throb
with fear, or flutter with a thought of shame! To whom would its
repose and peace have not appealed against disturbance, like the
innocent slumber of a child!

"Punctual, of course, Milly," said her husband, relieving her of