"stoker-dracula-168" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

this letter being all blotted. Being proposed to is all very nice
and all that sort of thing, but it isn't at all a happy thing when you
have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going
away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter
what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his
life. My dear, I must stop here at present, I feel so miserable,
though I am so happy.

"Evening.

"Arthur has just gone, and I feel in better spirits than when I left
off, so I can go on telling you about the day. Well, my dear, number
two came after lunch. He is such a nice fellow, an American from
Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh that it seems almost
impossible that he has been to so many places and has had such
adventures. I sympathize with poor Desdemona when she had such a
dangerous stream poured in her ear, even by a black man. I suppose
that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from
fears, and we marry him. I know now what I would do if I were a man
and wanted to make a girl love me. No, I don't, for there was Mr.
Morris telling us his stories, and Arthur never told any, and yet-
My dear, I am somewhat previous. Mr. Quincey P. Morris found me alone.
it seems that a man always does find a girl alone. No, he doesn't, for
Arthur tried twice to make a chance, and I helping him all I could;
I am not ashamed to say it now. I must tell you beforehand that Mr.
Morris doesn't always speak slang- that is to say, he never does so to
strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has
exquisite manners- but he found out that it amused me to hear him talk
American slang, and whenever I was present, and there was no one to be
shocked, he said such funny things. I am afraid, my dear, he has to
invent it all, for it fits exactly into whatever else he has to say.
But this is a way slang has. I do not know myself if I shall ever
speak slang; I do not know if Arthur likes it, as I have never heard
him use any as yet. Well, Mr. Morris sat down beside me and looked
as happy and jolly as he could, but I could see all the same that he
was very nervous. He took my hand in his, and said ever so sweetly:-

"'Miss Lucy, I know I ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of
your little shoes, but I guess if you wait till you find a man that is
you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you
quit. Won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the
long road together, driving in double harness?'

"Well, he did look so good-humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem
half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward; so I said, as
lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and that
I wasn't broken to harness at all yet. Then he said that he had spoken
in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a mistake in doing
so on so grave, so momentous, an occasion for him, I would forgive
him. He really did look serious when he was saying it, and I