"Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

Mrs. Fairfax answered the door herself. She was one of those plump, comfortable ladies, with swathes
of butter-colored hair coiled round her head, who made you feel good with life just to look at her.
Sophie felt just the tiniest bit envious of Lettie. Mrs. Fairfax looked from Sophie to Michael. She had
seen Sophie last a year ago as a girl of seventeen, and there was no reason for her to recognize her as an
old woman of ninety. "Good morning to you," she said politely.
Sophie sighed. Michael said, "This is Lettie Hatter's great-aunt. I brought her to see Lettie."
"Oh, I thought the face looked familiar!" Mrs. Fairfax exclaimed. "There's quite a family likeness. Do
come in. Lettie's little bit busy just now, but have some scones and honey while you wait."
She opened her front door wider. Instantly a large collie dog squeezed past Mrs. Fairfax's skirts, barged
between Sophie and Michael, and ran across the nearest flower bed, snapping off flowers right and left.
"Oh, stop him!" Mrs. Fairfax gasped, flying off in pursuit. "I don't want him out just now!"
There was a minute or so of helter-skelter chase, in which the dog ran hither and thither, whining in a
disturbed way, and Mrs. Fairfax and Sophie ran after the dog, jumping flower beds and getting in one
another's way, and Michael ran after Sophie crying, "Stop! You'll make yourself ill!" Then the dog set
off loping round one corner of the house. Michael realized that the way to stop Sophie was to stop the
dog. He made a crosswise dash through the flower beds, plunged round the house after the dog, and
seized it by two handfuls of its thick coat just as it reached the orchard at the back.
Sophie hobbled up to find Michael pulling the dog away backward and making such strange faces at her
that she thought at first he was ill. But he jerked his head so often toward the orchard that she realized
he was trying to tell her something. She stuck her face round the corner of the house, expecting to see a
swarm of bees.
Howl was there with Lettie. They were in a grove of mossy apple trees in full bloom, with a row of
beehives in the distance. Lettie sat in a white garden seat. Howl was kneeling on one knee in the grass
at her feet, holding one of her hands and looking noble and ardent. Lettie was smiling lovingly at him.
But the worst of it, as far as Sophie was concerned, was that Lettie did not look like Martha at all. She
was her own extremely beautiful self. She was wearing a dress of the same kind of pinks and white as
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the crowded apple blossom overhead. Her dark hair trailed in glossy curls over one shoulder and her
eyes shone with devotion for Howl.
Sophie brought her head back round the corner and looked with dismay at Michael holding the whining
collie dog. "He must have had a speed spell with him," Michael whispered, equally dismayed.
Mrs. Fairfax caught them up, panting and trying to pin back a loose coil of her buttery hair. "Bad dog!"
she said in a fierce whisper to the collie. "I'll put a spell on you of you do that once more!" The dog
blinked and crouched down. Mrs. Fairfax pointed a stern finger. "Into the house! Stay in the house!"
The collie shook himself free of Michael's hands and slunk away round the house again. "Thank you so
much," Mrs. Fairfax said to Michael as they all followed it. "He will keep trying to bite Lettie's visitor.
Inside!" she shouted sternly in the front garden, as the collie seemed to be thinking of going round the
house and getting the orchard the other way. The dog gave her a woeful look over its shoulder and
crawled dismally indoors through the porch.
"That dog may have the right idea," Sophie said. "Mrs. Fairfax, do you know who Lettie's visitor is?"
Mrs. Fairfax chuckled. "The Wizard Pendragon, or Howl, or whatever he calls himself," she said. "But
Lettie and I don't let on we know. It amused me when he first turned up, calling himself Sylvester Oak,
because I could see he'd forgotten me, though I hadn't forgotten him, even though is hair used to be
black in his student days." Mrs. Fairfax by now had her hands folded on front of her and was standing
bolt upright, prepared to talk all day, as Sophie had often seen her do before. "He was my old tutor's
very last pupil, you know, before she retired. When Mr. Fairfax was alive he used to like me to
transport us both to Kingsbury to see a show from time to time. I can manage two very nicely if I take it
slowly. And I always used to drop in on old Mrs. Pentstemmon while I was there. She likes her old
pupils to keep in touch. And one time she introduced this young Howl to us. Oh, she was proud of him.