25 лучших рассказов / 25 Best Short Stories

Sometimes the dollar-mark grew blurred in her mind’s eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as “truth” and “honor” and now and then just “kindness.” Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear of Nimrod[25 - Nimrod – Нимрод, герой Ветхого Завета, легендарный охотник, царь Ассирии и Вавилона, основатель Ниневии, одного из самых знаменитых городов Древнего мира.

So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at its market value by the hearts that it covered.

One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and Dan to a musical comedy.

Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived.

“I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her,” he said.

“Heard from who?” asked Nancy. “Isn’t Lou there?”

“I thought you knew,” said Dan. “She hasn’t been here or at the house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going to Europe.”

“Hasn’t anybody seen her anywhere?” asked Nancy.

Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in his steady gray eyes.

“They told me in the laundry,” he said, harshly, “that they saw her pass yesterday – in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about.”

For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand that trembled slightly on Dan’s sleeve.

“You’ve no right to say such a thing to me, Dan – as if I had anything to do with it!”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Dan, softening.

“I’ve got the tickets for the show to-night,” he said, with a gallant show of lightness. “If you – ”

Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it.

“I’ll go with you, Dan,” she said.

Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again.

At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the border of a little quiet park.