Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories - стр. 13

“I hope Vera was friendly?” she said.

“She was very interesting,” said Framton.

“I hope you don't mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “my husband and brothers will be home from shooting, and they always come in this way.”

She spoke cheerfully about the shooting and the birds. To Framton it was all purely horrible.

He made an effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic but he saw that the woman was giving him only a part of her attention, and her eyes were looking at the open window. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, no excitement, and no physical exercise,” said Framton, who thought that total strangers were interested in the details of one's illnesses. “On the matter of diet they are not in agreement,” he continued.

“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention – but not to what Framton was saying.

“Here they are!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and they look as if they were dirty up to the eyes!”

Framton shivered a little and turned towards the niece with a look expressing sympathetic understanding. But the child was looking through the open window with a horror in her eyes. In a shock of nameless fear Framton looked in the same direction.

In the twilight three figures were walking across the yard towards the window, they all carried guns in their arms, and one of them had a white coat over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a young voice sang out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”

Framton grabbed wildly his stick and hat; the hall door and the front gate were stages in his retreat. A bicyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid the crash.

“Here we are, my dear,” said the owner of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, “dirty, but most of it's dry. Who was that who ran out as we came up?”

“A very strange man, Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “he could only talk about his illnesses, and ran off without a word of good bye or apology when you arrived as if you were ghosts.”

“I think it was because of the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a fear of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the dogs grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their mind.”