"Пэлем Грэнвил Вудхауз. Much obliged, Jeeves (Премного обязан, Дживс; англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

the southern states of America you can't throw a brick without
hitting a Magnolia. But I was telling you about this business of
standing for Parliament. First, of course, you have to get the
nomination.'
'How did you manage that?'
'My fiancee fixed it. She knows one of the Cabinet ministers,
and he pulled strings. A man named Filmer.'
'Not A. B. Filmer?'
'That's right. Is he a friend of yours?'
'I wouldn't say exactly a friend. I came to know him slightly
owing to being chased with him on to the roof of a sort of summer-
house by an angry swan. This drew us rather close together for the
moment, but we never became really chummy.'
'Where was this?'
'On an island on the lake at my Aunt Agatha's place at Steeple
Bumpleigh. Living at Steeple Bumpleigh, you've probably been
there.'
He looked at me with a wild surmise, much as those soldiers
Jeeves has told me about looked on each other when on a peak in
Darien, wherever that is.
'Is Lady Worpledon your aunt?'
'And how.'
'She's never mentioned it.'
'She wouldn't. Her impulse would be to hush it up.'
'Then, good Lord, she must be your cousin.'
'No, my aunt. You can't be both.'
'I mean Florence. Florence Craye, my fiancee.'
It was a shock, I don't mind telling you, and if I hadn't been
seated I would probably have reeled. Though I ought not to have
been so surprised. Florence was one of those girls who are always
getting engaged to someone, first teaming up with Stilton
Cheesewright, then me, and finally Percy Gorringe, who was
dramatizing her novel Spindrift. The play, by the way, had recently
been presented to the public at the Duke of York's theatre and had
laid an instantaneous egg, coming off on the following Saturday.
One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage
because when he saw it the curtain was up. I had wondered a good
deal what effect this had had on Florence's haughty spirit.
'You're engaged to Florence?' I yipped, looking at him with a
wild surmise.
'Yes. Didn't you know?'
'Nobody tells me anything. Engaged to Florence, eh? Well,
well.'
A less tactful man than Bertram Wooster might have gone on to
add 'Oh, tough luck!' or something along those lines, for there was
no question but that the unhappy man was properly up against it,
but if there's one thing the Woosters have in heaping measure, it
is tact. I merely gripped his hand, gave it a shake and wished him
happiness. He thanked me for this.
'You're lucky,' I said, wearing the mask.