"THE SONG OF THE LARK" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

"Mustn't do that; bad for your eyes," he said, as Thea
shut the book quickly and slipped it under the covers.

Mrs. Kronborg called from her bed: "Bring the baby
here, doctor, and have that chair. She wanted him in there
for company."

Before the doctor picked up the baby, he put a yellow
paper bag down on Thea's coverlid and winked at her.
They had a code of winks and grimaces. When he went in
to chat with her mother, Thea opened the bag cautiously,
trying to keep it from crackling. She drew out a long bunch
of white grapes, with a little of the sawdust in which they
had been packed still clinging to them. They were called
Malaga grapes in Moonstone, and once or twice during the
winter the leading grocer got a keg of them. They were
used mainly for table decoration, about Christmas-time.
Thea had never had more than one grape at a time before.
When the doctor came back she was holding the almost
transparent fruit up in the sunlight, feeling the pale-green
skins softly with the tips of her fingers. She did not thank
him; she only snapped her eyes at him in a special way

which he understood, and, when he gave her his hand,
put it quickly and shyly under her cheek, as if she were
trying to do so without knowing it--and without his
knowing it.

Dr. Archie sat down in the rocking-chair. "And how's
Thea feeling to-day?"

He was quite as shy as his patient, especially when a
third person overheard his conversation. Big and hand-
some and superior to his fellow townsmen as Dr. Archie
was, he was seldom at his ease, and like Peter Kronborg
he often dodged behind a professional manner. There
was sometimes a contraction of embarrassment and self-
consciousness all over his big body, which made him awk-
ward--likely to stumble, to kick up rugs, or to knock over
chairs. If any one was very sick, he forgot himself, but he
had a clumsy touch in convalescent gossip.

Thea curled up on her side and looked at him with
pleasure. "All right. I like to be sick. I have more fun then
than other times."