"Bram Stoker - Dracula" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

about it. Mina, pray for my happiness.

Lucy


P.S.--I need not tell you this is a secret. Goodnight again. L.




LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY

24 May

My dearest Mina,


Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter.
It was so nice to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy.

My dear, it never rains but it pours. How true the old proverbs are.
Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet I never had
a proposal till today, not a real proposal, and today I had three.
Just fancy! Three proposals in one day! Isn't it awful!
I feel sorry, really and truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows.
Oh, Mina, I am so happy that I don't know what to do with myself.
And three proposals! But, for goodness' sake, don't tell any of
the girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas,
and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first
day at home they did not get six at least. Some girls are so vain!
You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle
down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity.
Well, I must tell you about the three, but you must keep it
a secret, dear, from every one except, of course, Jonathan.
You will tell him, because I would, if I were in your place,
certainly tell Arthur. A woman ought to tell her husband everything.
Don't you think so, dear? And I must be fair. Men like women,
certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they are. And women,
I am afraid, are not always quite as fair as they should be.

Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch.
I told you of him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic
asylum man, with the strong jaw and the good forehead.
He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same.
He had evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of
little things, and remembered them, but he almost managed to sit
down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they
are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept
playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream.
He spoke to me, Mina, very straightfordwardly. He told me