"Шервуд Андерсен. Сын Винди МакФерсон (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

The three McPhersons stood in a doorway leading into a shoe store. The boy
and the mother, white and speechless with humiliation, dared not look at
each other. In the flood of shame sweeping over them they stared straight
before them with hard, stony eyes.

The procession led by John Telfer at the bridle of the white horse marched
down the street. Looking up, the eyes of the laughing, shouting man met
those of the boy and a look of pain shot across his face. Dropping the
bridle he hurried away through the crowd. The procession moved on, and
watching their chance the mother and the two children crept home along
side streets, Kate weeping bitterly. Leaving them at the door Sam went
straight on down a sandy road toward a small wood. "I've got my lesson.
I've got my lesson," he muttered over and over as he went.

At the edge of the wood he stopped and leaning on a rail fence watched
until he saw his mother come out to the pump in the back yard. She had
begun to draw water for the day's washing. For her also the holiday was at
an end. A flood of tears ran down the boy's cheeks, and he shook his fist
in the direction of the town. "You may laugh at that fool Windy, but you
shall never laugh at Sam McPherson," he cried, his voice shaking with
excitement.




CHAPTER III


One evening, when he had grown so that he outtopped Windy, Sam McPherson
returned from his paper route to find his mother arrayed in her black,
church-going dress. An evangelist was at work in Caxton and she had
decided to hear him. Sam shuddered. In the house it was an understood
thing that when Jane McPherson went to church her son went with her. There
was nothing said. Jane McPherson did all things without words, always
there was nothing said. Now she stood waiting in her black dress when her
son came in at the door and he hurriedly put on his best clothes and went
with her to the brick church.

Valmore, John Telfer, and Freedom Smith, who had taken upon themselves a
kind of common guardianship of the boy and with whom he spent evening
after evening at the back of Wildman's grocery, did not go to church. They
talked of religion and seemed singularly curious and interested in what
other men thought on the subject but they did not allow themselves to be
coaxed into a house of worship. To the boy, who had become a fourth member
of the evening gatherings at the back of the grocery store, they would not
talk of God, answering the direct questions he sometimes asked by changing
the subject. Once Telfer, the reader of poetry, answered the boy. "Sell
papers and fill your pockets with money but let your soul sleep," he said
sharply.