"Oppenheim, E Phillips - The Kingdom Of The Blind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oppenheim E Phillips)

dearest friend. How many do you make that?"

The publisher counted them carefully.

"Eleven including ourselves," he announced.

"And we should be twelve," Lady Anselman sighed. "Of course!" she added, her
face suddenly brightening. "What an idiot I am! It's Ronnie we are waiting
for. One can't be cross with him, poor fellow. He can only just get about."

The fair girl, who had overheard, leaned across. The shade of newly awakened
interest in her face, and the curve of her lips as she spoke, added to her
charm. A gleam of sunlight flashed upon the yellow-gold of her plainly coiled
hair.

"Is it your nephew, Captain Ronald Granet, who is coming?" she asked a little
eagerly.

Lady Anselman nodded.

"He only came home last Tuesday with dispatches from the front," she said.
"This is his first day out."
"Ah! but he is wounded, perhaps?" Madame Selarne inquired solicitously.

"In the left arm and the right leg," Lady Anselman assented. "I believe that
he has seen some terrible fighting, and we are very proud of his D. S. O. The
only trouble is that he is like all the others--he will tell us nothing.

"He shows excellent judgment," Lord Romsey observed.

Lady Anselman glanced at her august guest a little querulously.

"That is the principle you go on, nowadays, isn't it?" she remarked. "I am
not sure that you are wise. When one is told nothing, one fears the worst,
and when time after time the news of these small disasters reaches us
piecemeal, about three weeks late, we never get rid of our forebodings, even
when you tell us about victories. . . . Ah! Here he comes at last," she
added, holding out both her hands to the young man who was making his somewhat
difficult way towards them. "Ronnie, you are a few minutes late but we're not
in the least cross with you. Do you know that you are looking better already?
Come and tell me whom you don't know of my guests and I'll introduce you."

The young man, leaning upon his stick, greeted his aunt and murmured a word of
apology. He was very fair, and with a slight, reddish moustache and the
remains of freckles upon his face. His grey eyes were a little sunken, and
there were lines about his mouth which one might have guessed had been brought
out recently by pain or suffering of some sort. His left arm reclined
uselessly in a black silk sling. He glanced around the little assembly.

"First of all," he said, bowing to the French actress and raising her fingers