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

to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We've got to drive a long piece, haven't
we? Mrs. Spencer said it was eight miles. I'm glad because I love driving.
Oh, it seems so wonderful that I'm going to live with you and belong to
you. I've never belonged to anybody-not really. But the asylum was the
worst. I've only been in it four months, but that was enough. I don't
suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you can't possibly
understand what it is like. It's worse than anything you could imagine.
Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn't mean
to be wicked. It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it? They
were good, you know-the asylum people. But there is so little scope for
the imagination in an asylum-only just in the other orphans. It was pretty
interesting to imagine things about them-to imagine that perhaps the girl
who sat next to you was really the daughter of a belted earl, who had been
stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died
before she could confess. I used to lie awake at nights and imagine things
like that, because I didn't have time in the day. I guess that's why I'm
so thin-I am dreadful thin, ain't I? There isn't a pick on my bones. I do
love to imagine I'm nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows."
With this Matthew's companion stopped talking, partly because she was
out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another
word did she say until they had left the village and were driving down a
steep little hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into the
soft soil, that the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees and
slim white birches, were several feet above their heads.
The child put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that
brushed against the side of the buggy.
"Isn't that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the bank,
all white and lacy, make you think of?" she asked.
"Well now, I dunno," said Matthew.
"Why, a bride, of course-a bride all in white with a lovely misty
veil. I've never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I
don't ever expect to be a bride myself. I'm so homely nobody will ever
want to marry meunless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a
foreign missionary mightn't be very particular. But I do hope that some
day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss.
I just love pretty clothes. And I've never had a pretty dress in my life
that I can remember-but of course it's all the more to look forward to,
isn't it? And then I can imagine that I'm dressed gorgeously. This morning
when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear this horrid
old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you know. A merchant
in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the
asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn't sell it, but I'd
rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart, wouldn't you?
When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be looking at me and
pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most
beautiful pale blue silk dress-because when you ARE imagining you might as
well imagine something worth while-and a big hat all flowers and nodding
plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots. I felt cheered up
right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island with all my might. I wasn't
a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither was Mrs. Spencer although she