"Montgomery, Lucy Maud - Anne Of Green Gables" - читать интересную книгу автора (Montgomery Lucy Maud)

out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them. They just
looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want
to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, `Oh, you POOR little
things! If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around
you and little mosses and Junebells growing over your roots and a brook
not far away and birds singing in you branches, you could grow, couldn't
you? But you can't where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little
trees.' I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so
attached to things like that, don't you? Is there a brook anywhere near
Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer that."
"Well now, yes, there's one right below the house."
"Fancy. It's always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I
never expected I would, though. Dreams don't often come true, do they?
Wouldn't it be nice if they did? But just now I fell pretty nearly
perfectly happy. I can't feel exactly perfectly happy because-well, what
color would you call this?"
She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and
held it up before Matthew's eyes. Matthew was not used to deciding on the
tints of ladies' tresses, but in this case there couldn't be much doubt.
"It's red, ain't it?" he said.
The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from
her very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.
"Yes, it's red," she said resignedly. "Now you see why I can't be
perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don't mind the other
things so much-the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. I can
imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf
complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I cannot imagine that red
hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, `Now my hair is a glorious
black, black as the raven's wing.' But all the time I know it is just
plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow, but it
wasn't red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster
brow. What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?"
"Well now, I'm afraid I can't," said Matthew, who was getting a
little dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another
boy had enticed him on the merry-goround at a picnic.
"Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she
was divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to
be divinely beautiful?"
"Well now, no, I haven't," confessed Matthew ingenuously.
"I have, often. Which would you rather be if you had the
choice-divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?"
"Well now, I-I don't know exactly."
"Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn't make much real
difference for it isn't likely I'll ever be either. It's certain I'll
never be angelically good. Mrs. Spencer says-oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr.
Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!!!"
That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child
tumbled out of the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They
had simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the
"Avenue."