"Stevenson_Markheim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Robert Louis)

Miss Blake, who never listened to what any one said, took it for
granted that the little girl was the tuner for whom M. le Proprietaire
had promised to send; and having bestowed on her a condescending nod,
passed out into the garden, where she told some of the visitors that
the piano had been tuned at last, and that the tuner was a young woman
of rather eccentric appearance.

"Really, it is quite abominable how women thrust themselves into every
profession," she remarked, in her masculine voice. "It is so
unfeminine, so unseemly."

There was nothing of the feminine about Miss Blake; her horse-cloth
dress, her waistcoat and high collar, and her billycock hat were of
the masculine genus; even her nerves could not be called feminine,
since we learn from two or three doctors (taken off their guard) that
nerves are neither feminine nor masculine, but common.

"I should like to see this tuner," said one of the tennis-players,
leaning against a tree.

"Here she comes," said Miss Blake, as the little girl was seen
sauntering into the garden.

The men put up their eye-glasses, and saw a little lady with a
childish face and soft brown hair, of strictly feminine appearance and
bearing. The goat came toward her and began nibbling at her frock. She
seemed to understand the manner of goats, and played with him to his
heart's content. One of the tennis players, Oswald Everard by name,
strolled down to the bank where she was having her frolic.

"Good-afternoon," he said, raising his cap. "I hope the goat is not
worrying you. Poor little fellow! this is his last day of play. He is
to be killed to-morrow for /table d'hote/."

"What a shame!" she said. "Fancy to be killed, and then grumbled at!"

"That is precisely what we do here," he said, laughing. "We grumble at
everything we eat. And I own to being one of the grumpiest; though the
lady in the horse-cloth dress yonder follows close upon my heels."

"She was the lady who was annoyed at me because I tuned the piano,"
the little girl said. "Still, it had to be done. It was plainly my
duty. I seemed to have come for that purpose."

"It has been confoundedly annoying having it out of tune," he said.
"I've had to give up singing altogether. But what a strange profession
you have chosen! Very unusual, isn't it?"

"Why, surely not," she answered, amused. "It seems to me that every
other woman has taken to it. The wonder to me is that any one ever