"Mary Stewart - Madam will you talk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"Oh Rommel!" said the boy, surprisingly enough.

Before I could decide what language this was, the boy looked up and saw
me. He straightened, pushed his hair back from his forehead, and
grinned.

"J'espere," he said carefully, "que ce n'etait fas votre chat,
mademoiselle?"

This, of course, settled the question of his nationality immediately,
but I am nothing if not tactful. I shook my head.

"My French isn't terribly good," I said. "Do you speak English,
monsieur?"

He looked immensely pleased.

"W:ell, as a matter of fact, I am English," he admitted. "Stop it,
Rommel!" He grabbed the dog with decision. "He hadn't hurt the cat, had
he? I just saw it jump for the balcony."

"It didn't look very worried."

"Oh, that's all right, then. I can't persuade him to behave decently,
as---as befits a foreigner. It seems funny to be foreigners, doesn't
it?"

I admitted that it did indeed.

"Have you just arrived?"

"At about four o'clock. Yes."

"Then you haven't seen much of Avignon yet. Isn't it a funny little
town? Will you like it, do you think?"

"I certainly like what I've seen so far. Do you like it here?"

It was the most trivial of small-talk, of course, but his face changed
oddly as he pondered the question. At that distance I could not read his
expression, but it was certainly not what one might expect of a boy--I
judged him to be about thirteen--who was lucky enough to be enjoying a
holiday in the South of France. Indeed, there was not much about him at
that moment, if you except the outward signs of crumpled shirt, stained
shorts, and mongrel dog, to suggest the average boy at all. His face,
which had, even in the slight courtesies of small-talk, betrayed humour
and a quick intelligence at work, seemed suddenly to mask itself, to
become older. Some impalpable burden almost visibly dropped on to his
shoulders. One was conscious, in spite of the sensitive youth of his