"MacAvoy,.R.A.-.Tea.With.The.Black.Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)course. Not San Francisco.
"You have been to Ireland?" she asked. But she guessed his answer before he could speak. "What did you do there?" His eyebrows lifted, and the lean face softened in memories. "I was looking for something." There was a silence Martha allowed to grow. Then he spoke again, with animation. "Mrs. Macnamara—it is Mrs. Macnamara, if I remem- ber?" "It was." He did not falter. "Mrs. Macnamara, have you heard the story of Thomas Rhymer?" "I know the ballad," she admitted. "But it's not Irish." "That ballad? No. That is Walter Scott. But the story itself is Irish, I believe. It was an Irishman who told it to me. "Listen!," he began, and as he spoke he stirred his spoon in his cup with a silver sound. Mrs. Macnamara noted this gesture with amusement. She was sure that Mr. Long had not taken sugar. "You know how Thomas the Rhymer was taken off by the queen of Elfland on her horse of the nine-and-fifty bells. How they swam the river of blood, and how she showed him the roads to heaven and hell, avoiding both of them to take a third. How he served her seven years in delightful capacity, and how in the end his poor reward was that he was made incapable of lying. This much is what got back to Scott." "There is more?" TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON 7 "Obviously. The ballad is cut off just where it becomes interesting. It does not touch on the predicament of a bard bereft of his stock in trade—flattery. It does not so much as mention the Rhymer's son." |
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