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

Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment.

“Do you belong with that bunch?” the policeman asked.

“Who are they?” was my answer.

“Why,” said he, “they are —”

But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy.

Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per week.

The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else’s account in the ledger kept by G[162 - in the ledger kept by G – here: in the book of God] – Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend Doctor[163 - Reverend Doctor – �the Reverend’ is the title of a clergyman in the Western Churches.] – Well then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy.

During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week. It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount.

Don’t care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on six dollars per week.

One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hat-pin within an eighth of an inch of her medulla oblongata[164 - medulla oblongata – the lowest part of the brain at the base of the scull (Latin)], she said to her chum, Sadie – the girl that waits on you with her left side:

“Say, Sade, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy.

”

“You never did!” exclaimed Sadie admiringly. “Well, ain’t you the lucky one? Piggy’s an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. You’ll have a swell time, Dulce.”

Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of life’s – real life’s – approaching dawn. It was Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her last week’s wages.

The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were glowing – calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors’ homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them.