"Alexander Green - Crimson Sails" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Alexander)

"Naturally, she's a princess. Filling her head with all sorts of fairy-tale
ships! You really are a queer fish, and you a man of property!"
"Listen," Longren whispered, "I think I will waken her, but it'll only be
because I'll be bashing your face in. Now get going!"
Half an hour later the beggar was seated in a tavern in the company of a
dozen fishermen. Sitting behind them, now tugging at a husband's sleeve,
now stretching a hand over a shoulder to reach for a glass of vodka--for
themselves, naturally--were some buxom women with shaggy brows. The
muscles of their arms were as big as paving stones. The beggar, fuming
from the affront, was relating his tale:
"...and he wouldn't give me a smoke. 'Now when you get to be of age,' he
says, 'a special red ship'll come for you. That's on account of how you're
fated to marry a prince. And,' he says, 'you mind what that magician said.'
But I say, 'Go on, wake her up, so's you can reach over and get your pouch.'
And, you know, he chased me halfway down the road."
"What? Who? What's he talking about?" the women's curious voices
demanded.
The fishermen turned their heads slightly to tell them what it was all
about, smiling wryly as they did:
"Longren and his daughter have become wild as animals, and maybe
they're even touched in the head, that's what the man here's saying. A
sorcerer came to see them, he says. And now they're waiting--ladies, see
you don't miss your chance! -- for a prince from some foreign land, and
he'll be sailing under crimson sails to boot!"
Three days later, as Assol was returning home from the toy shop in
town, she first heard the taunts:
"Hey, you gallows-bird! Assol! Look over here! See the crimson sails
coming in!"
The child started and involuntarily shielded her eyes as she gazed off
towards the sea. Then she turned back to where the shouting had come
from; twenty feet away she saw a group of children; they were making
faces and sticking their tongues out at her. The little girl sighed and
hurried off home.
 II. GRAY

If Caesar considered that it was better to be the first in a village than
the second in Rome, Arthur Gray did not have to envy Caesar as far as his
sagacious wish was concerned. He was born a captain, desired to be one,
and became one.
The great manor in which Gray was born was sombre inside and
magnificent without. The manor looked on flower gardens and a part of
the park. The very best imaginable tulips -- silver-blue, lavender and black
with a brush of pink -- snaked through the garden like strings of
carelessly-strewn beads. The old trees in the park slumbered in the sifting
gloom above the sedge of a meandering stream. The castle fence, for the
manor was actually a castle, was made of spiral cast-iron posts connected
by iron grillwork. Each post was crowned by a cast-iron lily blossom; on
festive occasions the cups were filled with oil and burned brightly into the
night as a far-stretching, fiery line.
Gray's parents were arrogant slaves of their social position, wealth and