Travels with my aunt / Путешествие с тетушкой. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“No bad medicine?”

“There was no contretemps[16 - contretemps – (фр.) помеха, препятствие]”, my aunt said. “Oh gracious, Henry, you haven’t forgotten your parcel?”

“No, no, I have it here.”

“I think perhaps Wordsworth had better put it in the refrigerator.”

“Quite unnecessary, Aunt Augusta. Ashes don’t deteriorate.”

“No, I suppose not. How silly of me. But let Wordsworth put it in the kitchen just the same. We don’t want to be reminded all the time of my poor sister.

She had indeed. Her dressing-table gleamed with them: mirrors and powder-jars and ash-trays and bowls for safety pins. “They brighten the darkest day,” she said. There was a very large double-bed as curlicued as the glass. “I am especially attached to Venice,” she explained, “because I began my real career there, and my travels. I have always been very fond of travel.

“Age strikes us all before we know it,” I said.

“Age? I was not referring to age. I hope I don’t look all that decrepit, Henry, but I like having a companion and Wordsworth is very occupied now because he’s studying to enter the London School of Economics. This is Wordsworth’s snuggery,” and she opened the door of an adjoining room. It was crowded with glass Disney figures and worse – all the grinning mice and cats and hares from inferior American cartoon films, blown with as much care as the chandelier.

“From Venice too,” my aunt said, “clever but not so pretty. I thought them suitable, however, for a man’s room.”

“Does he like them?”

“He spends very little time there,” my aunt said, “what with his studies and everything else…”

“I wouldn’t like to wake up to them,” I said.

“He seldom does.”

My aunt led me back to the sitting-room, where Wordsworth had laid out three more Venetian glasses with gold rims and a water jug with colours mingled like marble. The bottle of Black Label[17 - bottle of Black Label – (разг.) бутылка хорошего виски] looked normal and out of place, rather like the only man in a dinner-jacket at a fancy-dress party[18 - fancy-dress party – (разг.