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

Perhaps the price of food. If we went to the theatre we talked in the interval about the play – or other plays. At breakfast we spoke of the news. She was adept at guiding conversation back into the right channel if it strayed. She had a phrase, “My dear, this isn’t the moment…” Perhaps in the bedroom, I found myself thinking, with something of Aunt Augusta’s directness, she talked about love. That was why she couldn’t bear my father sleeping in odd places, and, when I developed an interest in dahlias, she often warned me to forget about them during banking hours[5 - during banking hours – (зд.

By the time we had finished our walk the ashes were ready for me. I had chosen a very classical urn in black steel, and I would have liked to assure myself that there had been no error, but they presented me with a package very neatly done up in brown paper with red paper seals which reminded me of a Christmas gift.

“What are you going to do with it?” Aunt Augusta said.

“1 thought of making a little throne for it among my dahlias.”

“It will look a little bleak in winter.”

“I hadn’t considered that. I could always bring it indoors at that season.”

“Backwards and forwards. My sister seems hardly likely to rest in peace.”

“I’ll think over it again.”

“You are not married, are you?”

“No.”

“Any children?”

“Of course not.”

“There is always the question to whom you will bequeath my sister.

“One cannot think of everything at once.”

“You could have left it here,” Aunt Augusta said.

“I thought it would look well among the dahlias,” I replied obstinately, for I had spent all the previous evening designing a simple plinth in good taste.

“À chacun son goût[6 - À chacun son goût – (фр.) У каждого свой вкус]”, my aunt said with a surprisingly good French accent.

“Well, Aunt Augusta,” I said at the gates of the crematorium (I was preparing to leave, for my garden called), “it’s been many years since we saw each other… I hope…” I had left the lawn-mower outside, uncovered, and there was a hint of rain in the quick grey clouds overhead. “I would like it very much if one day you would take a cup of tea with me in South wood.