The Road. Аудирование на 50000+ английских слов с текстовым сопровождением

I had made her speak first.

I nodded my head and gulped.

«It is the first time I have ever… asked,» I faltered.

«Come right in.» The door swung open. «We have already finished eating, but the fire is burning and I can get something up for you.»

She looked at me closely when she got me into the light.

«I wish my boy were as healthy and strong as you,» she said. «But he is not strong. He sometimes falls down. He just fell down this afternoon and hurt himself badly, the poor dear.

»

She mothered him with her voice, with an ineffable tenderness in it that I yearned to appropriate. I glanced at him. He sat across the table, slender and pale, his head swathed in bandages. He did not move, but his eyes, bright in the lamplight, were fixed upon me in a steady and wondering stare.

«Just like my poor father,» I said. «He had the falling sickness. Some kind of vertigo. It puzzled the doctors. They never could make out what was the matter with him.

»

«He is dead?» she queried gently, setting before me half a dozen soft-boiled eggs.

«Dead,» I gulped. «Two weeks ago. I was with him when it happened. We were crossing the street together. He fell right down. He was never conscious again. They carried him into a drug-store. He died there.»

And thereat I developed the pitiful tale of my father – how, after my mother’s death, he and I had gone to San Francisco from the ranch; how his pension (he was an old soldier), and the little other money he had, was not enough; and how he had tried book-canvassing.

Also, I narrated my own woes during the few days after his death that I had spent alone and forlorn on the streets of San Francisco.

While that good woman warmed up biscuits, fried bacon, and cooked more eggs, and while I kept pace with her in taking care of all that she placed before me, I enlarged the picture of that poor orphan boy and filled in the details. I became that poor boy.

I believed in him as I believed in the beautiful eggs I was devouring. I could have wept for myself. I know the tears did get into my voice at times. It was very effective.

In fact, with every touch I added to the picture, that kind soul gave me something also. She made up a lunch for me to carry away. She put in many boiled eggs, pepper and salt, and other things, and a big apple. She provided me with three pairs of thick red woollen socks.