"BAB A SUB-DEB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

"You amaze and shock me, Barbara," she said coldly.
"I shouldn't have to wear tulle around my shoulders to hide
the bones!" I retorted. "Sis is rather thin."
"You are a very sharp-tongued little girl," mother said,
looking up at me. I am two inches taller than she is.
"Unless you learn to curb yourself, there will be no
parties for you, and no party dresses."
This was the speach that broke the Camel's back. I could
endure no more.
"I think," I said, "that I shall get married and end
everything."
Need I explain that I had no serious intention of taking
the fatal step? But it was not deliberate mendasity. It was
Despair.
Mother actually went white. She cluched me by the arm and
shook me.
"What are you saying?" she demanded.
"I think you heard me, mother" I said, very politely. I was
however thinking hard.
"Marry whom? Barbara, answer me."
"I don't know. Anybody."
"She's trying to frighten you, mother" Sis said. "There
isn't anybody. Don't let her fool you."
"Oh, isn't there?" I said in a dark and portentious manner.
Mother gave me a long look, and went out. I heard her go
into father's dressing-room. But Sis sat on my bed and watched
me.
"Who is it, Bab?" she asked. "The dancing teacher? Or your
riding master? Or the school plumber?"
"Guess again."
"You're just enough of a little Simpleton to get tied up to
some wreched creature and disgrace us all."
I wish to state here that until that moment I had no
intention of going any further with the miserable business. I am
naturaly truthful, and Deception is hateful to me. But when my
sister uttered the above dispariging remark I saw that, to
preserve my own dignaty, which I value above precious stones, I
would be compelled to go on.
"I'm perfectly mad about him," I said. "And he's crazy
about me."
"I'd like very much to know," Sis said, as she stood up and
stared at me, "how much you are making up and how much is true."
None the less, I saw that she was terrafied. The family
Kitten, to speak in allegory, had become a Lion and showed its
clause.
When she had gone out I tried to think of some one to hang
a love affair to. But there seemed to be nobody. They knew
perfectly well that the dancing master had one eye and three
children, and that the clergyman at school was elderly, with two
wives. One dead.