The Cricket on the Hearth / Сверчок за очагом. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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�Why, what’s this round box? Heart alive, John, it’s a wedding-cake!’

�Leave a woman alone to find out that,’ said John, admiringly. �Now a man would never have thought of it. Whereas, it’s my belief that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it at the pastry-cook’s.’

�And it weighs I don’t know what – whole hundredweights[9 - Hundredweights – в Англии мера веса = 112 фунтов = 50,8 кг]!’ cried Dot, making a great demonstration of trying to lift it.

�Read the writing on the other side,’ said John.

�Why, John! My Goodness, John!’

�Ah! who’d have thought it!’ John returned.

�You never mean to say,’ pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and shaking her head at him, �that it’s Gruff and Tackleton the Toymaker!’

John nodded.

Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent – in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips the while with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the mean time[10 - in the mean time – (разг.) тем временем], who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature, Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them homes; and so on.

�And that is really to come about!’ said Dot. �Why, she and I were girls at school together, John.’

He might have been thinking of her, or nearly thinking of her, perhaps, as she was in that same school time.

�And he’s as old! As unlike her! – Why, how many years older than you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John?’

�How many more cups of tea shall I drink tonight at one sitting, than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I wonder!’ replied John, good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to the round table, and began at the cold ham.