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

nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing
fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical
person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady
at the abbey he said very brusquely:-

"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore
out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they
wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers,
an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them
feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's
an' drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I
wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them- even the
newspapers, which is full of fool-talk." I thought he would be a
good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he
would mind telling me something about the whale-fishing in the old
days. He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six,
whereupon he laboured to get up, and said:-

"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn't
like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to
crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em; an', miss, I lack
belly-timber sairly by the clock."

He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he
could, down the steps. The steps are a great feature of the place.
They lead from the town up to the church; there are hundreds of
them- I do not know how many- and they wind up in a delicate curve;
the slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down
them. I think they must originally have had something to do with the
abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out visiting with her mother,
and as they were only duty calls, I did not go. They will be home by
this.

1 August.- I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most
interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come
and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should
think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will
not admit anything, and downfaces everybody. If he can't out-argue
them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement
with his views. Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn
frock, she has got a beautiful colour since she has been here. I
noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming up and
sitting near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people;
I think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man
succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share
instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at
once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it
down:-

"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that's what it be,