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

went down the platform to where a wrapped bundle of newspapers lay against
the building, under the window of the telegraph office, and taking it in
his arm disappeared, still grinning, into the baggage-room.

Sam McPherson walked down Main Street, past the shoe store, the bakery,
and the candy store kept by Penny Hughes, toward a group lounging at the
front of Geiger's drug store. Before the door of the shoe store he paused
a moment, and taking a small note-book from his pocket ran his finger down
the pages, then shaking his head continued on his way, again absorbed in
doing sums on his fingers.

Suddenly, from among the men by the drug store, a roaring song broke the
evening quiet of the street, and a voice, huge and guttural, brought a
smile to the boy's lips:

"He washed the windows and he swept the floor,
And he polished up the handle of the big front door.
He polished that handle so carefullee,
That now he's the ruler of the queen's navee."

The singer, a short man with grotesquely wide shoulders, wore a long
flowing moustache, and a black coat, covered with dust, that reached to
his knees. He held a smoking briar pipe in his hand, and with it beat time
for a row of men sitting on a long stone under the store window and
pounding on the sidewalk with their heels to make a chorus for the song.
Sam's smile broadened into a grin as he looked at the singer, Freedom
Smith, a buyer of butter and eggs, and past him at John Telfer, the
orator, the dandy, the only man in town, except Mike McCarthy, who kept
his trousers creased. Among all the men of Caxton, Sam most admired John
Telfer and in his admiration had struck upon the town's high light. Telfer
loved good clothes and wore them with an air, and never allowed Caxton to
see him shabbily or indifferently dressed, laughingly declaring that it
was his mission in life to give tone to the town.

John Telfer had a small income left him by his father, once a banker in
the town, and in his youth he had gone to New York to study art, and later
to Paris; but lacking ability or industry to get on had come back to
Caxton where he had married Eleanor Millis, a prosperous milliner. They
were the most successful married pair in Caxton, and after years of life
together they were still in love; were never indifferent to each other,
and never quarrelled; Telfer treated his wife with as much consideration
and respect as though she were a sweetheart, or a guest in his house, and
she, unlike most of the wives in Caxton, never ventured to question his
goings and comings, but left him free to live his own life in his own way
while she attended to the millinery business.

At the age of forty-five John Telfer was a tall, slender, fine looking
man, with black hair and a little black pointed beard, and with something
lazy and care-free in his every movement and impulse. Dressed in white
flannels, with white shoes, a jaunty cap upon his head, eyeglasses hanging