Практический курс английского языка - Камянова Т.
ISBN 5-85550-177-9
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«Joe, dear,» she said smiling, «I have a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General - General A.B. Pinkney's daughter - on Seventy first Street. Such a wonderful house, Joe - you ought to see the front dooii Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I have never seen anything like this before. My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I feel I love her already. She is so nice - dresses always in white, and the sweetest manners! She is only eighteen years old. I will be giving her three lessons a week; and just think, Joe! 5 dollars a lesson. It is not very much of course, but when I manage to get three or two more pupils, I'll have enough money to pay for my music lessons.»
«That's all right for you, Delia,» said Joe, «but how about me? Do you think I am going to let you work while і paint my pictures. Nothing of the kind! I guess I can sell newspapers or do anything else, and bring in a dollar or two.»
«Joe, dear, you are silly,» exclaimed Delia. «You must continue to study. Look, I am not going to leave my music and do something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can five as happily as millionaires on f 5 dollars a week. You shouldn't leave Mr. Magister.»
«All right.» said Joe, «I don't very much like your idea to give lessons. It isn't Art. But if you want it so much, you can do it.»
«When one loves one's Art, no service seems too hard,» said Delia.
«Magister praised the sky in the sketch I made in the park,» said Joe. «And Tinkle allowed me to hang two of them in his window. I may sign them and sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees the sketches.* «I am sure you will,» said Delia sweetly.
During all the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe hurried to the Central Park to do sketches. It was most times seven o'clock when he returned home.
At the end of the week Delia proudly put three five-dollar notes on the table.
«Sometimes,» she said, «it is not very easy with Clementina. No doubt, she should practise more. I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses in white, and that gets monotonous. But General Pinkney is the dearest old man! He comes sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano - and stands there and listens.»
And then Joe with the air of a Monte Cristo, got out of his pocket a ten, a five, a two and a one-dollar notes and laid them on the table too.
«l've managed to sell my sketch to a man from Peoria,» he said proudly.
«Don't joke with me,» said Delia - «not from Peoria!»
«It makes no difference. But I am sorry you didn't see him, Delia. A fat man with a lot of money. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and bought it. And he ordered another one - to take back with hirn.»
«Oh, I'm so glad for you,» exclaimed Delia. «I was always sure that you would be a success. Now we have thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We'll have wonderful dinner tonight.»
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On the next Saturday evening; Joe reached home first. He put his eighteen dollars on the table and washed what seemed to be a dark paint from Jiis hands.
Delia arrived half an hour later. Her eyes were sad, and her right hand was tied up with a bandage.
«How is this?» asked Joe.
Delia laughed, but her voice wasn't very joyful.
«Clementina,» she explained, «wanted me to have dinner with them after the lesson. There was a Welsh rabbit for dinner. I know, Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. When serving the rabbit, she spilt a boiling dressing over my hand. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gneral Pinkney! - Joe, the old man was very upset He ran downstairs and sent a maid to a drug-store for some oil and bandages. It doesn't hurt so much now.»
Delia turned round, and having noticed money on the table, she exclaimed:
«Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?»
«Did I?» said Joe. «Just ask the man from Peoria. And he thinks he wants another landscape. But at what time this afternoon did you bum your hand, Dele?»
«At five o'clock, J think,» said Dele. «The iron - I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. General Pinkney was so upset, Joe, when...»
«Sit down here a moment DeIe,» said Joe. «Teil me how it really happened, this accident I mean.»
She kept silence for a moment or two, then in a low voice she repeated a phrase or two about General Pinkney; but then came the truth and tears.
«I failed to get any pupils,» she said. «And I didn't want you to give up your lessons; and I got a place to iron shirts in that big Twenty-fourth Street laundry. And I suppose you believed me when I was telling you about General Pinkney and Clementina, didn't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon, I was all the way home thinking of the story I would tell you. You are not angry, are you, Joe? Anyway, my work helped you to sell your sketches to that man from Peoria.»
«He wasn't from Peoria,» said Joe slowly.
«Well, It doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe - and kiss me, Joe - and how did you get to know that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina?»,
