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

"Never mind, it's not important. You listen, now. Anyway, I left. Well, I
came to the big, awfully frightening store; it was terribly crowded. People
shoved me, but I made my way through and went over to a black-haired
man in spectacles. I don't remember a word of what I said to him; finally,
he snickered, poked about in my basket, looked at some of the toys, then
wrapped them up in the kerchief again and handed them back."
Longren listened to her angrily. He seemed to be seeing his overawed
daughter in the richly-dressed crowd at the counter piled high with fine
goods. The neat man in the spectacles was explaining condescendingly
that he would go bankrupt if he decided to offer Longren's simple toys for
sale. He had casually and expertly set up folding houses and railroad
bridges on the counter before her; tiny, perfectly-made automobiles,
electric sets, airplanes and motors. All of this smelled of paint and school.
According to him, children nowadays only played games that imitated the
occupations of their elders.
Then Assol had gone to Alladin's Lamp and to two other shops, but all
in vain.
As she finished her tale she laid out their supper; having eaten and
downed a mug of strong coffee, Longren said: "Since we're out of luck,
we'll have to start looking for something else. Perhaps I'll sign on a ship
again--the Fitzroy or the Palermo. Of course, they're right," he continued
thoughtfully, thinking of the toys. "Children don't play nowadays, they
study. They keep on studying and studying, and will never begin to live.
This is so, but it's a shame, it really is a shame. Will you be able to manage
without me for one voyage? I can't imagine leaving you alone." "I could
sign up with you, too. Say, as a barmaid."
"No!" Longren sealed the word with a smack of his palm on the
shuddering table. "You won't sign up as long as I'm alive. However, there's
time to think of something."
He settled into a sullen silence. Assol sat down beside him on the edge
of the stool; out of the corner of his eye, without turning his head, he could
see that she was doing her best to console him and nearly smiled. No, if he
smiled it would frighten her off and embarrass her. Mumbling to herself,
she smoothed his tumbled grey hair, kissed his moustache and, covering
her father's bristly ears with her small, tapering fingers, said,
"There, now you can't hear me say that I love you." Longren had sat still
while she had been making him pretty, as tense as a person afraid to
inhale smoke, but hearing what she said, he laughed uproariously.
"You dear," he said simply and, after patting her cheek, went down to
the beach to have a look at his rowboat.
For a while Assol stood pensively in the middle of the room, hesitating
between a desire to give herself up to wistful melancholy and the necessity
of seeing to the chores; then, having washed the dishes, she took store of
the remains of their provisions. She neither weighed nor measured, but
saw that they would not have enough flour to last out the week, that the
bottom of the sugar tin was now visible; the packets of coffee and tea were
nearly empty and there was no butter; the only thing on which her eye
rested ruefully, as it was the sole exception, was a sack of potatoes. Then
she scrubbed the floor and sat down to stitch a ruffle on a skirt made over
from something else, but recalling instantly that the scraps of material