"Chesterton, G.K. - The Wisdom of Father Brown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chesterton G.K)

for some trouble in passing the matches, than as if he were (as he was)
practically thanking the Curator of Kew Gardens for coming with him
into a field to find a four-leaved clover. With scarcely a semi-colon
after his hearty thanks, the little man began his recital:

"I told you my name was Brown; well, that's the fact,
and I'm the priest of the little Catholic Church I dare say you've seen
beyond those straggly streets, where the town ends towards the north.
In the last and straggliest of those streets which runs along the sea
like a sea-wall there is a very honest but rather sharp-tempered
member of my flock, a widow called MacNab. She has one daughter,
and she lets lodgings, and between her and the daughter,
and between her and the lodgers--well, I dare say there is a great deal
to be said on both sides. At present she has only one lodger,
the young man called Todhunter; but he has given more trouble
than all the rest, for he wants to marry the young woman of the house."

"And the young woman of the house," asked Dr Hood, with huge and
silent amusement, "what does she want?"

"Why, she wants to marry him," cried Father Brown, sitting up eagerly.
"That is just the awful complication."

"It is indeed a hideous enigma," said Dr Hood.

"This young James Todhunter," continued the cleric,
"is a very decent man so far as I know; but then nobody knows very much.
He is a bright, brownish little fellow, agile like a monkey,
clean-shaven like an actor, and obliging like a born courtier.
He seems to have quite a pocketful of money, but nobody knows what
his trade is. Mrs MacNab, therefore (being of a pessimistic turn),
is quite sure it is something dreadful, and probably connected with dynamite.
The dynamite must be of a shy and noiseless sort, for the poor fellow
only shuts himself up for several hours of the day and studies something
behind a locked door. He declares his privacy is temporary and justified,
and promises to explain before the wedding. That is all that anyone knows
for certain, but Mrs MacNab will tell you a great deal more than
even she is certain of. You know how the tales grow like grass on
such a patch of ignorance as that. There are tales of two voices
heard talking in the room; though, when the door is opened,
Todhunter is always found alone. There are tales of a mysterious
tall man in a silk hat, who once came out of the sea-mists and
apparently out of the sea, stepping softly across the sandy fields and
through the small back garden at twilight, till he was heard
talking to the lodger at his open window. The colloquy seemed to end
in a quarrel. Todhunter dashed down his window with violence,
and the man in the high hat melted into the sea-fog again.
This story is told by the family with the fiercest mystification;
but I really think Mrs MacNab prefers her own original tale:
that the Other Man (or whatever it is) crawls out every night from the