The Classic Humor MEGAPACK ®. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ is not one to be trusted. Not one, my child, not one! Believe your aunts.”

      “It seems impossible, aunty,” declared the soft voice of Adnah. “Why, in that magazine were the pictures of some of the most noble-looking creatures—”

      “Tut, tut, child, those are the very worst kind,” hastily interrupted Aunt Matilda. “The more handsome they are, the more dangerous. Since you remain so incredulous, however, I suppose I shall have to tell you what we know about them.”

      The young man in the pool felt his circulation stopping. The two women were calmly sitting down on the bank to talk confidences, and from what he knew of the sex they were as likely as not to sit there until doomsday, compelling him to appear before the angel Gabriel without even a shroud. He was conscious of the beginning of a cramp in his left leg and his shoulders were becoming icy. He had to be motionless, too, and that was another hardship. The least movement might betray him, for the women sat quite near, and Adnah was facing him. Thanks to the thickness of his leafy hiding-place she could not see him, but he could see her quite plainly, and she was well worth looking at. She, too, wore a plain, skimp, black dress, and her brown hair was parted in the center and smoothed down over her ears, but there the resemblance to Aunt Matilda and the others ended, for her hair was wavy in spite of the severely straight brushing, and it glinted gold where little flecks of sunlight filtered through the branches of the tall trees to caress it. In the hair, too, was a single red rose, caught into place with a natural grace that it seemed a pity to waste on three spinster aunts and two dogs, and the same note of color was repeated in another rebellious blossom at the throat. The young face was plump and oval, and the cheeks were pink, the brown eyes were wide and sparkling and—Oh, well, the young man in the pool stopped cataloguing her attractions and simply summed her up as a stunningly pretty girl. Then he tried once more to get rid of that maddening mosquito and wished to high Heaven that they would go!

      “When our dear mother died we four girls were all quite young,” began Aunt Matilda, pausing primly to smooth down her skirts, and the young man in the watery prison gave up in despair. She was starting out like the old-fashioned story books, which never arrived any place, and never knew how to get back if they did. “Your Aunt Sarah was eighteen years old, your Aunt Ann and myself sixteen, and your poor, deluded mother fourteen. Our father, child, married again within the year, and so you see our acquaintance with the duplicity of men began at a very early age. Of course, we refused to live with a stepmother or to allow her to occupy our own dear mother’s house. Left, then, upon our own responsibilities at so tender a period of our lives, it behooved us to conduct ourselves with the strictest of propriety, and I am most happy to say that we came triumphantly through the ordeal. Naturally, we being great beauties in those days, my child, great beauties, many gay young men fluttered about us, and some of them really made quite favorable impressions upon us. There was one in particular—”

      Aunt Matilda paused for a sigh and fixed her eyes in sad reminiscence upon a little clump of ferns that, full of conceit, were waving incessant salutes at their dainty reflections in the water.

      “Hang the story of her life!” muttered the miserable youth in the pool. His teeth were beginning to chatter.

      “Do go on, aunty!” cried the eager Adnah.

      “Well, child, they were all alike. Having insinuated their way into our confidences by agreeable manners and by their really indisputable attractiveness, having aroused the beginnings of tender emotions, what did these young men do, one and all? Why, instead of waiting until the acquaintance had ripened into mutual undying affection and then falling gracefully to their knees with honorable proposals of marriage, they one and all chose what seemed to be favorable moments and strove, by cajolery or stealth or even force, to kiss us. To kiss us!”

      “Gracious!” exclaimed Adnah.

      There was a moment’s silence. The young man in the pool could feel the goose-flesh pimpling between his shoulder blades.

      “After all, though, it might not have been so very dreadful,” finally commented Adnah, after a thoughtful sigh.

      “Adnah!” cried the horrified Aunt Matilda. “I am astounded!”

      “I can’t help it, aunty,” said Adnah. “I can’t make it seem so terrible, no matter how hard I try. In fact it—it seems to me that it would have been—well—rather nice.”

      “Adnah!”

      “But, aunty, didn’t it ever seem that way to you, sometimes?”

      Aunt Matilda was shocked and silent for a moment, then over her pale cheeks crept a pink flush.

      “I’ll not deny,” she presently confessed in a hesitant voice, “that if we had not had each other to rely upon for firmness we might perhaps have been deluded by some of these young scapegraces. They were truly quite appealing at times. There was one in particular—”

      Again Aunt Matilda became lost in meditation. The young man in the pool swore softly, even though he perceived the tear that trembled upon the lady’s eyelash. It was impossible to be sympathetic while a leech was fastened to his ankle.

      “My mother must have thought the way I do, I am sure,” persisted Adnah. The remark brought Aunt Matilda out of the past with a jerk.

      “Your poor mother had the most pitiful experience of all, child,” she replied. “She married. Shortly after you were born, she died, fortunately spared all knowledge of your father’s faithless fickleness. Adnah, he, too, married again! You, Adnah, was too young to protect yourself from a stepmother, but we came to your rescue. Your great uncle, Peter, had just died and left us this fine estate, and here we are, trying to shield you from the wiles of the destroyer, man!”

      “Some men must be nice, or so many, many girls would not want them,” commented Adnah, still unconvinced.

      “I’ll not deny, dear, that some of them seem quite nice,” admitted the other with a sigh. “There was one in particular—”

      The dogs interrupted at this moment with a racing struggle for some red and brown object.

      “Now what has Castor got?” cried Adnah, jumping up to give chase in a healthy and delightful burst of speed.

      The youth in the pool dismally realized that Castor had his missing sock, a brown lisle affair with a quaint red pattern in it, at a dollar a pair. His teeth were pounding together like castanets, now, so loudly that he feared Aunt Matilda must surely hear them. Adnah presently returned, flushed rosy red by the exercise and more charming than ever.

      “I couldn’t catch them,” she panted. “Gracious, but I am warm! There is plenty of time for a plunge before dinner. Just wait, Aunt Mattie, until I run for the bathing suits,” and she flashed away again.

      Great Cæsar’s ghost! The hidden youth grew so warm with apprehension that the goose-flesh disappeared and the chattering of his teeth stopped. His dilemma was unspeakable and unsolvable, seemingly, but suddenly it was solved for him. The dogs came back!

      The sock had been shredded and they sought fresh diversion. After a cordially barked invitation for the young man to come out and play, they went in after him. There was a tremendous splashing struggle. Suddenly the willows were pulled down by a muscular bare arm, and the face of a young man appeared above it to the astounded gaze of Aunt Matilda.

      “Excuse me, madam,” he began, lunging viciously at Castor and Pollux with his feet. “Please call off your dogs.”

      Aunt СКАЧАТЬ