"Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Amazing Interlude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

The chairs were gone from the decks, preparatory to the morning landing,
so they walked about and Sara Lee at last told him her story - the
ladies of the Methodist Church, and the one hundred dollars a month she
was to have, outside of her traveling expenses, to found and keep going
a soup kitchen behind the lines.

"A hundred dollars a month," he said. "That's twenty pounds. Humph!
Good God!"

But this last was under his breath.

Then she told him of Mabel Andrews' letter, and at last read it to him.
He listened attentively. "Of course," she said when she had put the
letter back into her bag, "I can't feed a lot, even with soup. But if I
only help a few, it's worth doing, isn't it?"

"Very much worth doing," he said gravely. "I suppose you are not, by
any chance, going to write a weekly article for one of your newspapers
about what you are doing?"

"I hadn't thought of it. Do you think I should?"

Quite unexpectedly Mr. Travers patted her shoulder.

"My dear child," he said, "now and then I find somebody who helps to
revive my faith in human nature. Thank you."

Sara Lee did not understand. The touch on the shoulder had made her
think suddenly of Uncle James, and her chin quivered.

"I'm just a little frightened," she said in a small voice.

"Twenty pounds!" repeated Mr. Travers to himself. "Twenty pounds!"
And aloud: "Of course you speak French?"

"Very little. I've had six lessons, and I can count - some."

The sense of unreality which the twenty pounds had roused in Mr. Travers'
cautious British mind grew. No money, no French, no objective, just a
great human desire to be useful in her own small way - this was a new type
to him. What a sporting chance this frail bit of a girl was taking! And
he noticed now something that had escaped him before - a dauntlessness,
a courage of the spirit rather than of the body, that was in the very
poise of her head.

"I'm not afraid about the language," she was saying. "I have a phrase
book. And a hungry man, maybe sick or wounded, can understand a bowl of
soup in any language, I should think. And I can cook!"