Лучшие рассказы О. Генри = The Best of O. Henry

“Two dollars, suh,” Clara would say in her half-contemptuous, half- Tuskegeenial[40 - Tuskageenial – the word invented by the author from Tuskagee, a city in central Alabama, and genial (kindly, sociable)] tones.

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: “Goodness me! Why didn’t you keep up with us?”

Mrs.

Parker showed her the double parlours. “In this closet,” she said, “one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal —”

“But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist,” said Miss Leeson, with a shiver.

Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the way to the second floor back.

“Eight dollars?” said Miss Leeson.

“Dear me! I’m not Hetty if I do look green. I’m just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower.”

Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his door.

“Excuse me, Mr. Skidder,” said Mrs. Parker, with her demon’s smile at his pale looks. “I didn’t know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins[41 - lambrequins – the Baroque style ornaments; originally the mantling on a helmet to shield the wearer from the sun’s rays.

].”

“They’re too lovely for anything,” said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly the way the angels do.

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.

“Anna Held’ll jump at it,” said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish.

Presently the tocsin[42 - tocsin = poisonous] call of “Clara!” sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson’s purse. A dark goblin[43 - goblin – in Western folklore, a mischievous and malicious spirit attached to a household] seized her, mounted a Stygian[44 - Stygian – here: terrible; from Styx, in Greek mythology, a river in the underworld.