75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

They walked together along the passage to the entrance hall, where they saw the fresh, freckled face of the Duke of Chester, who was bounding buoyantly along towards them.

�Come along, Pound,’ he cried breathlessly. �I’ve been looking for you everywhere. The dinner’s going again in spanking style, and old Audley has got to make a speech in honour of the forks being saved. We want to start some new ceremony, don’t you know, to commemorate the occasion. I say, you really got the goods back, what do you suggest?’

�Why,’ said the colonel, eyeing him with a certain sardonic approval, �I should suggest that henceforward we wear green coats, instead of black.

�Oh, hang it all!’ said the young man, �a gentleman never looks like a waiter.’

�Nor a waiter like a gentleman, I suppose,’ said Colonel Pound, with the same lowering laughter on his face. �Reverend sir, your friend must have been very smart to act the gentleman.

Father Brown buttoned up his commonplace overcoat to the neck, for the night was stormy, and took his commonplace umbrella from the stand.

�Yes,’ he said; �it must be very hard work to be a gentleman; but, do you know, I have sometimes thought that it may be almost as laborious to be a waiter.’

And saying �Good evening,’ he pushed open the heavy doors of that palace of pleasures. The golden gates closed behind him, and he went at a brisk walk through the damp, dark streets in search of a penny omnibus[103 - omnibus – a large vehicle designed to carry passengers on a fixed route, a bus].

Ma’ame Pelagie (Kate Chopin)

I

When the war began, there stood on an imposing mansion of red brick, shaped like the Pantheon[104 - the Pantheon – the 18th century building in Paris, an example of Neoclassical architecture with columns and a high dome]. A grove of majestic live-oaks surrounded it.

Thirty years later, only the thick walls were standing, with the dull red brick showing here and there through a matted growth of clinging vines. The huge round pillars were intact; so to some extent was the stone flagging of hall and portico. There had been no home so stately along the whole stretch of Cote Joyeuse. Everyone knew that, as they knew it had cost Philippe Valmet sixty thousand dollars to build, away back in 1840.