"Valentin Katayev. The Cottage in the Steppe (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Good, let's continue," Petya said as he paced up and down with his
arms behind his back, enjoying every moment of his superiority and his
teacher's authority. "Well, er ... about three hundred years later, this
classical literary Latin lost its supremacy and was replaced by a popular
Latin, and so on, and so forth-anyway, it's not all that important." (Gavrik
nodded in agreement.) "The main thing, my friend, is that this very same
Latin finally ended up by having twenty letters in the alphabet, and then
three more were added to it."
"That makes it twenty-three!" Gavrik put in happily.
"Right. Twenty-three letters in all."
"What are they?"
"Don't rush into Hell before your father!" Petya intoned the Latin
master's favourite saying-subconsciously he had been imitating him all the
time. "The letters of the Latin alphabet, which you will now write down,
are: A, B, C, D...."
Gavrik sat up, licked the tip of his pencil, and began copying the
Latin letters gracefully.
"Wait a minute, silly, what are you doing? Write a Latin 'B,' not a
Russian one."
"What's the Latin one like?"
"The same as the Russian 'V.' Understand?"
"I'm not that dumb!"
"Erase what you've written and correct it."
Gavrik pulled a little piece of an "Elephant" India rubber carefully
wrapped up in a scrap of paper from one of the pockets of his wide corduroy
breeches, rubbed the elephant's backside vigorously over the Russian letter,
and wrote the Latin "B" in its place.
"Tell you what," Petya said-he was beginning to feel quite bored with
it all-"you just keep on copying the Latin letters from the book, land I'll
stretch my legs meanwhile."
Gavrik copied diligently, and Petya began to stretch his legs, that is,
he began to walk back and forth with his hands clasped behind him until,
finally, he came to a stop before the dining-room sideboard. It is a
well-known fact that all sideboards have a special magnetism where boys are
concerned, and it rarely happens that a boy passes a sideboard without
peeping in to see what it contains. Petya was no exception, the more so
since Auntie had been careless enough to say:
"... And keep away from the sideboard."
Petya knew perfectly well that she had in mind the large jar of
strawberry jam which his grandmother in Yekaterinoslav had sent them for
Christmas. They had not opened it yet, although it was meant for the
holidays, and as the holidays had already passed, Petya felt a bit
aggrieved. It was really hard to understand Auntie.
Usually so kind and generous, when it came to jam she became
monstrously, inexplicably stingy. One could not even hint at jam in her
presence. A terrified look would come into her eyes and she would rattle
off:
"No, no! By no means! Don't dare go near it. I'll give it to you when
the time comes."
But when that time would come, no one could say. She herself said