"William Morrison - Date of Publication 2083 AD" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

to encourage him by pretending to believe a story like that.
 It was harder, however, to take things as a joke when something just as silly happened to her. In this
case she could remember almost every word exactly, without having the slightest idea of what had
caused the whole conversation to take so unexpected a turn.
The usual group was in for bridge. They had been playing for about half an hourтАФthat skinny Mrs.
Cayley munching away daintily at all the richest cakes as if she thought they might put some decent flesh
on her, Mrs. Munro making a great fuss about the fact that the special candies she was eating were
non-nutritive and therefore non-fattening, the others just eating normally and too much as the mood
struck them. Mrs. Munro was dummy, and by some shrewdly ill-timed advice managed to make her
partner go down three.
Her partner was furious but Mrs. Munro just giggled. "You'll never guess whom I saw with
somebody else's wife," she said in her loud whisper.
"Really?" said Mrs. Cayley. "Janet's husband?"
"Not in a million years. It was my husband!"
Carrie sat up as if she had received an electric shock. This was a new sort of gossip.
"Well, at least your Bruce has good taste in women," said Mrs. Cayley generously. "Now, when my
husband steps outтАФwell, really, I'm ashamed of him. Of course, I suppose he does the best he can, poor
dear."
That was the way it went the rest of that afternoon. When Carrie thought back to it later she
shuddered. She had never before taken part in such a gossip session and she hoped that she never,
would again. Each of them had chatted, not about some absent individual but about herself and her own
relations. What skeletons had popped out of the closets!
It was the morning after that Barbara's letter came. "We had the funniest basketball game lest night,"
wrote Barbara. "Our team was playing the girls from State College and right in the middle of the game,
when it was so exciting and we were all yelling like mad, our captain, instead of shooting at the basket,
suddenly stopped and said, 'This is no fun, girls. Let's aim for something big.тАЭ
"And she turned right around and threw the ball as hard as she could at Professor Hazlehurst's head,
the one who teaches chemistry. You knowтАФI've told you about him. And then all the players began to
throw the ball at people in the crowd.
"You can imagine the uproar! The referees were blowing their whistles and all the girls were yelling
and rushing to get out and I was afraid some of them would get hurt. But at last President Newsom
managed to quiet things down and they stopped the game.
"They've called in Professor Griggs, who teaches Psychology, but she admits that she hasn't the
slightest idea why it happened. Some of the girls say it was gamblers and they bribed the players but
that's so silly. Nobody ever bets on our games.
"It's just one of those mysteries that it looks as if they'll never solve."
Carrie read with amazement, going back again and again to make sure that she hadn't misinterpreted
Barbara's straggly script. She hadn't. Toward the end of the letter Barbara added something that
surprised her almost as much as the account of the basketball game.
"You'll never guess who wrote to meтАФyour dear son, James! It's the first time in his life he ever had
anything to say to his sister. It must have been quite a sacrifice for him to spare the three cents for the
stamp. But seriously, Mother, I was touched. He's really a very good kid at heart. He didn't say much
but from him the very idea of writing means a lot. I've misplaced the letter now but I'll let you see it later.
It was so very amusing."
She would have to say something nice to James, thought Carrie. He was, she agreed with Barbara, a
most thoughtful boy. He had changed of late. Not that he behaved very differently about hanging up his
coat or leaving his shoes in the middle of the floor at night but there was something about him, she
couldn't tell what, that made her feel he was a treasure among sons, a joy and a comfort.
She was aware of a feeling of pride in him that night when she and Bill left him staring at the television
set. He had promised faithfully to go to bed at 9:30 and as she kissed him she said, "Don't forget to have