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

suspense the other day in which the heroine, having experienced a
sock in the eye or two, was said to be lost in a maze of mumbling
thoughts, and that description would have fitted me like the paper
on the wall.
My heart was heavy. When a man is an old friend and pretty
bosom at that, it depresses you to hear that he's engaged to
Florence Craye. I recalled my own emotions when I had found myself
in that unpleasant position. I had felt like someone trapped in the
underground den of the Secret Nine.
Though, mark you, there's nothing to beef about in her outer
crust. At the time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright I
remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy
with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blonde hair; the
sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been
the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class Sultans; and
though I hadn't seen her for quite a while, I presumed that these
conditions still prevailed. The fact that Ginger, when speaking of
her, had gone so readily into his turtle dove impersonation seemed
to indicate as much.
Looks, however, aren't everything. Against this pin-up-ness of
hers you had to put the bossiness which would lead her to expect
the bloke she married to behave like a Hollywood Yes-man. From
childhood up she had been ... I can't think of the word ... begins
with an i... No, it's gone ... but I can give you the idea. When at
my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge, which
naturally involved a lot of researching into Holy Writ, and in the
course of my researches I came upon the story of the military chap
who used to say 'Come' and they cometh and 'Go' and they goeth. I
have always thought that that was Florence in a nutshell. She would
have given short shrift, as the expression is, to anyone who had
gone when she said 'Come' or the other way round. Imperious, that's
the word I was groping for. She was as imperious as a traffic cop.
Little wonder that the heart was heavy. I felt that Ginger,
mistaking it for a peach, had plucked a lemon in the garden of
love.
And then my meditations took a less sombre turn. This often
happens after a good lunch, even if you haven't had a cocktail. I
reminded myself that many married men positively enjoy being kept
on their toes by the little woman, and possibly Ginger might be one
of them. He might take the view that when the little w made him sit
up and beg and snap lumps of sugar off his nose, it was a
compliment really, because it showed that she was taking an
interest.
Feeling a bit more cheerful, I reached for my cigarette case
and was just going to open it, when like an ass I dropped it and it
fell into the road. And as I stepped from the pavement to retrieve
it there was a sudden tooting in my rear, and whirling on my axis I
perceived that in about another two ticks I was going to be rammed
amidships by a taxi.
The trouble about whirling on your axis, in case you didn't