"Пэлем Грэнвил Вудхауз. Much obliged, Jeeves (Премного обязан, Дживс; англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

me for the week-end and to dwell with too much enthusiasm on the
excellence of the earlier trains back to the metropolis on Monday
morning. The sunny smile widened an inch or two.
'Awfully good of you to have me, old blood relation.'
'It is, rather.'
'I look forward to seeing you.'
'Who wouldn't?'
'Each minute will seem like an hour till we meet. How's
Anatole?'
'Greedy young pig, always thinking of Anatole.'
'Difficult to help it. The taste lingers. How is his art these
days?'
'At its peak.'
'That's good.'
'Ginger says his output has been a revelation to him.'
I asked her to repeat this. It had sounded to me just as if she
had said 'Ginger says his output has been a revelation to him', and
I knew this couldn't be the case. It turned out, however, that it
was.
'Ginger?' I said, not abreast.
'Harold Winship. He told me to call him Ginger. He's staying
here. He says he's a friend of yours, which he would scarcely admit
unless he knew it could be proved against him. You do know him,
don't you? He speaks of having been at Oxford with you.'
I uttered a joyful cry, and she said if I did it again, she
would sue me, it having nearly cracked her eardrum. A notable
instance of the pot calling the kettle black, as the old saying has
it, she having been cracking mine since the start of the
proceedings.
'Know him?' I said. 'You bet I know him. We were like ...
Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'Who were those two fellows?'
'Sir?'
'Greek, if I remember correctly. Always mentioned when the
subject of bosom pals comes up.'
'Would you be referring to Damon and Pythias, sir?'
'That's right. We were like Damon and Pythias, old ancestor.
But what's he doing chez you? I wasn't aware that you and he had
ever met.'
'We hadn't. But his mother was an old school friend of mine.'
'I see.'
'And when I heard he was standing for Parliament in the by-
election at Market Snodsbury, I wrote to him and told him to make
my house his base. Much more comfortable than dossing at a pub.'
'Oh, you've got a by-election at Market Snodsbury, have you?'
'Under full steam.'
'And Ginger's one of the candidates?'
'The Conservative one. You seem surprised.'
'I am. You might say stunned. I wouldn't have thought it was