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

“�The elephant,’” I read, “�is only a huge animal, but he is the most worthy of beasts that lives on the earth, and the most intelligent. I will give you an example of his excellence; he…’” The writing ran along a crease and I couldn’t read it, but my aunt chimed gently in. “�He never changes his mate and he tenderly loves the one of his choice.’ Go on, dear.”

“�With whom,’” I read, “�nevertheless he mates but every third year, and then for five days only and so secretly that he has never been seen to do so.

’”

“He was trying to explain,” my aunt said, “I am sure of it now, that if he had been a little slack in his attentions[57 - if he had been a little slack in his attentions – (разг.) если он и был неразборчив в своих привязанностях], it was only because of the girls – he didn’t love me less.”

“�But he is to be seen again on the sixth day, on which day, before doing anything else, he goes straight to some river wherein he bathes his whole body, for he has no desire to return to the herd until he has purified himself.

’”

“Curran was always a clean man,” my aunt said. “Thank you, dear, you read it very well.”

“It doesn’t seem very applicable to dogs,” I said.

“He turned it so beautifully that no one noticed, and it was really directed at me. I remember he had a special dogs’ shampoo which had been blessed at the altar on sale outside the church door that Sunday.

”

“What became of Curran?”

“I’ve no idea,” Aunt Augusta said. “He must have left his church, for he couldn’t have carried on without me. Hatty hadn’t the right touch for a deaconess. I dream of him sometimes – but he would be ninety years old now, and I find it hard to picture him as an old man. Well, Henry, I think it is time for us both to sleep.”

All the same, I found sleep difficult to attain, even in my comfortable bed at the Royal Albion.

The lights of the Palace Pier sparkled on the ceiling, and round and round in my head went the figures of Wordsworth and Curran, the elephant and the dogs of Hove, the mystery of my birth, the ashes of my mother who was not my mother, and my father asleep in the bath. This was not the simple life which I had known at the bank, where I could judge a client’s character by his credits and debits.