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

You can imitate a glass with your hand. Liquid is not a necessary part of the cure.”

I drew a long free breath and asked, “Who was my mother, Aunt Augusta?” But she was already far away from that subject, speaking to the driver. “No, no, my man. This is the Crescent.”

“You said turn right, lady.”

“Then I apologize. It was my mistake. I am always a little uncertain about right and left. Port I can always remember because of the colour – red means left. You should have turned to port not starboard.

“I’m no bloody navigator, lady.”

“Never mind. Just continue all the way round and start again. I take all the blame.[10 - I take all the blame. – (книжн.) Это моя вина.]”

We drew up outside a public house. The driver said, “Ma’am, if you had only told me it was the Crown and Anchor…”

“Henry,” my aunt said, “if you could forget your hiccup for a moment.”

“Huc?” I asked.

“It’s six and six on the clock,” the driver said.

“Then we will let it reach seven shillings,” Aunt Augusta retorted. “Henry, I feel I ought perhaps to warn you before we go in that a white funeral in my case would have been quite out of place.”

“But-you’ve-never-married,” I said, very quickly to beat the hiccups.

“I have nearly always, during the last sixty or more years, had a friend,” Aunt Augusta said. She added, perhaps because I looked incredulous, “Age, Henry, may a little modify our emotions – it does not destroy them.

Even those words did not prepare me properly for what I found next. My life in the bank had taught me, of course, to be unsurprised, even by the demand for startling overdrafts, and I had always made it a point[11 - had always made it a point – (разг.) всегда старался] neither to ask for nor to listen to any explanation. The overdraft was given or refused simply on the previous credit of the client. If I seem to the reader a somewhat static character he should appreciate the long conditioning of my career before retirement.

Chapter 3

The Crown and Anchor was built like a bank in Georgian style[12 - Georgian style – георгианский стиль в строительстве, архитектуре и проч. Датируется 1714–1830 гг.