THE BOY NEXT DOOR by J. London

Sladen Morris is the boy next door. He has grown very tall now, and all the girls think he is wonderful. But I remember when he refused to comb his hair and to force him to wash his face. Of course, he remembers me too; whenever I appear in a new dress and special hair-do, he says, "Well, well, look at Betsy, she's almost grown-up. But I remember her first party, when she was so excited that she dropped her ice-cream on her best dress, and she ran home crying."

So when I say that Sladen Morris didn't mean anything to me, I am quite serious. But I had known him so long that I felt I had to take care of him — just as I feel towards Jimmy, my little brother. That's the only f eeling I had — neighbourly friendship — when I tried to save Sladen from Merry Ann Milburn.

Merry Ann — I'm sure her real name was simply Mary; but Mary wasn't poetic enough for her. She came to Springdale to visit her aunt and uncle; her aunt brought her to our house f or tea. She looked wonderful — I always tell the truth — with her bright, blonde hair and big blue eyes. And she said many high, fine things. But as soon as her aunt and mother left the room, Merry Ann changed, as T. knew she would. "What do people do f or entertainment in this dead town?" That was the first thing she said. And then — "It's so far from New York!"

"Oh!" I said, "we have dances at the Country Club every Saturday, and swimming and tennis and..."

She interrupted me: "Are there any interesting men?"

I had never before thought of them as "interesting," or as "men" either. But I started naming all the boys in town. "There is Benny Graham," I said, "and there is Carter Williams, and Dennis Brown, and Bill Freeman. All quite interesting." That was a lie, but not a very big one. I did not name Sladen Morris, because I had already decided to save him from that terrible girl.

At that moment, Merry Ann looked out of our window, just as Sladen came across the grass towards our house — probably to invite me to play a game of tennis, as usual. He came in without asking for permission. "Ah!" he said, his eyes on blonde Merry Ann — he didn't even notice me — "where did you come from, my beauty?"

"From New York," she answered, "but I don't want to go back there — not now!"

Not too clever, I think, but he seemed happy to hear it. "I don't remember why I decided to come here," he said. "But now I'm sure a good angel brought me."

"And did the good angel push that tennis racket into your hand?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, my tennis racket," he said, looking foolish. He still didn't look at me. "Do you play tennis?" he asked Merry Ann.

“Very little”, Merry Ann said. “I will need help”.

“What about a game now?” Sladen asked.

"I'd love a game — but I'll have to go home and change my clothes."

"I'll take you home and wait for you," Sladen offered.

"Good-bye, Betsy," Merry Ann said. "Please, tell your mother how much I enjoyed this afternoon at your house."

"And please come often," I said — and I thought to myself, I'd like to give you a cup of tea next time with a little poison in it.

Well, the result of this conversation was that suddenly I f elt very bad, and I ran to my bedroom and threw myself on my bed, and I cried. Mother can hear tears through three walls and soon I heard her voice at the door. "Betsy, dear," she said, "May I come in?"

"Of course," I answered. "But I've got a terrible headache."

"I have an idea," Mother began. "Perhaps you'd like to invite your friends to a party here?"

A party. For a whole year I had asked Mother to let me give a party, and she had always answered, "It will cost too much," or "Wait until you are eighteen," and a dozen other reasons; now she was suggesting a party herself.

Well, after that everywhere I went, there was Merry Ann with Sladen Morris behind her, like a big dog. I had always played tennis with Sladen whenever the weather wasn't wet; now I had to look for a partner, and I had to watch him playing with Merry Ann. She was a terrible player: she didn't even hold her racket correctly. But she wore those little white tennis dresses that cinema actresses wear in the pictures and, to tell the truth, she looked very nice.

I knew that the party would be a mistake with Merry Ann among the guests; but it was Mother's favourite subject. So I invited all the "nice young people", as Mother calls them, to come to our house for dinner before the Country Club dance.

They all agreed to come — six boys who wanted a chance to be with Merry Ann, and five girls, including me, who came because they didn't want anybody to think they were afraid of the Merry enemy.

Mother bought me a new dress, with a very wide skirt: it was not the simple, girlish dress that my mother usually chooses for me. And my father bought me flowers to wear in my hair, which was combed up. Before the guests arrived, I looked forward to the dinner with more bravery than I had expected, because the new dress and the hair-do gave me strength. But that was before they arrived. When they came and I saw Merry Ann holding Sladen's arm, my courage left me. My dress was nothing, compared with the clouds of red chiffon that hung on Merry Ann's shoulders and swam around her.

"Well, well, look at Betsy," Sladen started. "But I remember her when..."

"I remember also," I interrupted coldly, "so you needn't spend your time telling us about that incident a hundred years ago."

Merry Ann monopolised the conversation, and she talked only with the boys — turning her big blue eyes first on one then another. "What's the Country Club like?" she asked. "I have gone dancing only at New York clubs, so I don't know much about small-town clubs."

The dinner was as uninteresting as I had expected. When it was over, everybody went to the Country Club, feeling a little ashamed that it couldn't compare with anything in New York.

All the boys danced with me — they had to, because they were my guests. The evening was very warm, and little by little everybody began to go outside to sit around the swimming pool. Dennis Brown and I went out too, and we walked up and down in front of their chairs.

It was just in front of Merry Ann that it happened. Perhaps it was an accident — I don't say she did it on purpose — but I wasn't so near her chair, and her foot was pushed out very far. Of course I couldn't see her foot in the dark, and I fell over it and into the pool. As I sent down, I could hear Merry Ann laughing, and I hoped I would drown. But I knew that anybody who swam as well as I did couldn't seriously hope for such an end to her suffering. I did not come up — I knew they were all standing there laughing — so I swam under water to the iron ladder at the other end of the pool. I planned to run up the ladder and then as fast as I could to the dressing-room. From there, I would go home.

When I found the ladder with my hand, I began to pull myself up. But then I discovered that my dress was caught in the ladder. I pulled and pulled (I was still under water) but I couldn't free the dress. And then everything became black.

When I came to myself, I was lying on my face and Sladen was pumping the water out of me. At first I was too uncomfortable to notice anything; but then I began to take more interest in the scene. I saw that several of the boys had offered themselves as the hero of the incident; not only Sladen’s best suit was full of water; it was running from the suits and hands and faces of Dennis and Bill and Carter. Even Janet, who is an athlete like me, had jumped in to pull me out.

"I'm sorry," I said, as soon as I could talk again. "It was my fault."

"No, it wasn't, but don't talk, you little fool," Sladen ordered angrily.

"Yes, keep quiet," Merry Ann said. "Everybody was so worried about you. Why did you hide at the bottom of the pool?"

And then Sladen said something that showed he wasn't a gentleman at all. But I shall love him for it as long as I live. "Hit her, Nora!" he said. "I am a gentleman, and besides, I'm busy."

"Oh — you terrible people!" Merry Ann cried. "I won't stay here another minute!"

"You boys can choose who is the unlucky one that takes her home," Sladen said. "Perhaps Benny and Joe will both go in the car with her. She is too dangerous to be alone with the driver."

He rose to his feet. "Get up, Betsy," he ordered. "I think you will probably go through life all right, if you choose a more practical swimming costume in future." The way Sladen said it made me feel comfortable and warm, which was foolish: there was nothing especially pleasant in is words.

All of us, the wet and the dry, got into the cars. Sladen put his coat around me and took me home.

"Listen you," he said on the way. "I see that I'll have to stay nearer to you — you simply can't take care of yourself. Better not go out of the house unless I go with you. Don't you think that's a good idea?"

For the first time in my life, I felt my strength as a weak woman, though my hair-do was wet and ruined.

"Sladen, you saved my life. You are terribly strong and you always know what to do. And if you want me to be with you, I'll be glad." I looked at him with an expression that I thought might have an effect.

"You know, Betsy," Sladen continued, very seriously, "it's strange, sometimes you don't see something that's under your own nose. It has just come to my mind that you are the best girl I know, and I've lived next door to you for seventeen years."

He stopped the car and kissed me. It wasn't the best kind of a kiss, because we were both still wet. But for some reason it was very romantic, and sud- denly I felt beautiful and interesting. I sat there looking at Sladen Morris with new eyes, probably because he suddenly didn't look at all like the boy next door.

NOTES:

1. poison — яд;

2. drown — тонуть;

3. ladder — лестница;

4. pump out — выкачивать.

Unit 15

SURPRISE by J. Galsworthy

There was a time when geniuses sometimes starved. But there is no reason why a genius must starve in our modern times. The following story of my friend, Bruce, proves that this is true. He was almost sixty when I met him, and he was the author of about fifteen books. The few people who really understood serious realistic literature called him 'a genius'. But Bruce was not interested in what people thought of him or his work. He never read criticism of his books in the newspapers or magazines. He lived alone in his small, dark, dirty room. From time to time he disappeared for several months; and then he appeared again and began to write.

He was a tall, thin man with a face like mark Twain's: black eyebrows, a grey moustache and grey hair. His eyes were dark brown and sad; they seemed not to belong to his face or to the world around him. He had never married, and lived quite alone. He never had much money; and the year I am writing about had been even worse than usual for him. His last book had been a hopeless failure. Besides, he had had an operation, which had cost him much money and left him too weak to work. The day I went to see him, I found him in a gloomy mood, half lying on two chairs, smoking strong cigarettes, which I hated.

"Hello!" he said, and then continued without giving me a chance to ask after his health: "Last night I went into a place that they call a cinema. Have you ever been in once?"

"Ever been? Do you know how long the cinema has existed? Since 1900!"

"Is that so? A terrible place, and terrible people in it. Well, last night they showed a film — what a thing! I've never read such an idiotic story or seen such idiotic characters. How can people look at it? I'm writing a parody on it."

"A parody on an idiotic film?"

"Yes! My heroine is one-quarter black, three quarters white. She is unbelievably beautiful, and all the men run af ter her. Her brother, a man with a heart of stone, wants her to marry a millionaire, who is as bad as he is. All the characters have deep, dark secrets in their lives." He laughed.

"How can you spend your time on such foolishness?" I asked.

"My time!" he answered angrily. "Who needs my time? Nobody buys my books. I'll probably 'starve to death!" He took a page of scenario and laughed again as he read it. "In that film last night they had a race between a train and a car. I've done better: I have a race between a train, a car, an airplane and a horse."

I began to be interested. "May I look at your scenario when you have finished it?" I asked.

"It's already finished. I enjoyed writing it so much that I couldn't sleep until I had come to the end." He gave me the papers. "Take it, you'll have a good laugh, I hope. The heroine's secret is that she isn't black at all. She is part Spanish, part French, and she is a southern aristocrat. And the bad brother isn't really her brother, and the millionaire in reality is a poor man, and the man she loves, who seems to be poor, is really rich." And he laughed until his face was red and his eyes were full of tears.

I went away worried about him, about his health and his penniless condition. How could I help him? How could anybody help him?

After dinner that evening, I began to read the scenario. There were thirty-five pages, and as soon as I had read ten of them, it was clear to me that he had written a masterpiece. I knew that any good film company would be glad to pay whatever he wanted to ask for it. "But," I thought. "if I go to him and tell him what I am planning to do with his scenario, he'll throw it in the fire. He'll never agree to be known as the author of such a thing. I remember how he laughed at it. How can I make him allow me to do whatever I like with the scenario?"

I went to see him again the next day. He was reading.

I interrupted him. "Must I give you back the scenario, or can I keep it?"

"What scenario?"

"The one that you gave me to read yesterday."

"Oh! What do I need it for? Throw it away."

"All right," I said. "I'll throw it away. Excuse me,I see you're busy."

"No, I'm not," he said. "I have nothing to do. It's f oolish to try to write anything: I get less and less for every book I publish. I am dying of poverty."

"It's your own fault," I said. "You refuse to think about what the public wants."

"How can I know what they want?"

"You don't try to. If I tell you how to make some money by writing something that the public wants, you’ll throw me out of the room."

I returned home and did a little work on the scenario. It was very easy; it was a fine scenario. I wanted to write his name on it, but I was afraid to. At last I decided not to write his name, but to say it was written by 'a genius'. That's a wonderful word; everybody respects it and fears it a little. I knew that after they read the scenario, they would feel it really was written by a genius.

I took it to a leading film company the next day with a note saying: "The author, a recognised literary genius, f or his own reasons prefers to remain unknown." The company was silent for two weeks, but I wasn't worried. I knew they would come to me: they had to — the scenario was too good, it couldn't f ail. And when they appeared, I refused their first offers. I made them come three times. At last I gave them an ultimatum. They agreed to all my demands, as I knew they would: they knew how much the scenario was worth.

Now I had come to the last and greatest difficulty. How could I give the money to Bruce? Many wild ideas came to my mind. At last I decided that I would say I had sold the scenario, because I wanted to make some money f or myself. "He'll be angry with me, but he won't be able to refuse to take the money," I thought.

When I came to his room, I found him lying on two chairs, as usual, smoking his black cigarettes and playing with an old cat that he had found in the street. I asked after his health, and then said: "There's something I must tell you — I'm afraid you may think it rather unpleasant."

"Go on!" he ordered.

"Do you remember that scenario that you wrote and gave me about six weeks ago?"

"Yes, you do. About the beautiful black aristocrat."

"Oh," he laughed. "That foolish thing!"

'-'Well, I sold it."

"What? Who wants to publish a thing like that?"

"It isn't published. They are making a film out of it. A superfilm, they call it."

His eyes opened wide.

"Don't argue," I said. "It's done — I've sold it and here is the money — three thousand pounds. I had to do some work on it, so if you want to pay me ten per cent, I won't refuse."

"My God!" he said.

"Yes, yes," I went on, speaking more quickly. "I know what you are thinking. I know your high ideas about art and literature and culture. But that's all nonsense, Bruce. The story may be vulgar, I agree. But we're vulgar, it's foolish to pretend we are not. vI don't mean you, of course, but people in general. The film will be good entertainment."

I couldn't look at the f ire in his eyes, and I hurried to defend myself.

"You don't live in the world, Bruce. You don't understand what ordinary people want; something to make their grey lives a little brighter. They want blood, excitement of any kind. You haven't hurt them by this film, you have been kind to them. And this is your money, and I want you to take it!"

The cat suddenly jumped down. I waited, expect- ing the storm to begin at any moment. Then I began again. "I know that you hate the cinema and everything connected with it..."

His voice interrupted me. "Nonsense!" he roared. "What are you talking about? Who said I hate the cinema? I go there three times a week!"

This time, I cried, "My God!" I pushed the money into his hand and ran away, followed by the cat.

Exercises and Assignments on the Text

HOME by E. Hughes

This is a story about a young Negro musician, who returns to the USA after the years that he had spent abroad learning to play the violin and giving concerts in different European cities. The action of the story takes place in 1932 in the USA. This was the time of the world economic crisis.

Roy Williams had come home from abroad to visit his mother and sister and brothers who still remained in his native town, Hopkinsville. Roy had been away seven or eight years, travelling all overthe world. He came back very well dressed, but very thin. He wasn't well.

It was this illness that made Roy come home. He had a feeling that he was going to die, and he wanted to see his mother again. This feeling about death started in Vienna, where so many people were hungry, while other people spent so much money in the night clubs where Roy's orchestra played.

In Vienna Roy had a room to himself because he wanted to study music. He studied under one of the best violin teachers.

"It's bad in Europe," Roy thought. "I never saw people as hungry as this."

But it was even worse when the orchestra went back to Berlin. Hunger and misery were terrible there. And the police were beating people who protested, or stole, or begged.

It was in Berlin that Roy began to cough. When he got to Paris his friend took care of him, and he got better. But all the time he had the feeling that he was going to die. So he came home to see his mother.

He landed in New York and stayed two or three days in Harlem. Most of his old friends there, musicians and actors, were hungry and out of work. When they saw Roy dressed so well, they asked him for money.

"It's bad everywhere," Roy thought. "I want to go home."

That last night in Harlem he could not sleep. He thought of his mother. In the morning he sent her a telegram that he was coming home to Hopkinsville, Missouri.

"Look at that nigger," said the white boys, when they saw him standing on the station platform in the September sunlight, surrounded by his bags with the bright foreign labels. Roy had got off a Pullman — something unusual for a Negro in that part of the country.

"God damn!" said one of the white boys. Suddenly Roy recognised one of them. It was Charlie Mumford, an old playmate — a tall red-headed boy. Roy took of f his glove and held out his hand. The white boy took it but did not shake it long. Roy had for- gotten he wasn't in Europe, wearing gloves and shaking hands with a white man!

"Where have you been, boy?" Charlie asked.

"In Paris," said Roy.

"Why have you come back?" someone asked. "I wanted to come and see my mother."

"I hope she is happier to see you than we are," another white boy said.

Roy picked up his bags, there were no porters on the platform, and carried them to an old Ford car that looked like a taxi. He felt weak and frightened. The eyes of the white men at the station were not kind. He heard someone say behind him: "Nigger." His skin was very hot. For the first time in the last seven or eight years he felt his colour. He was home.

Roy's home-coming concert at the Negro church was a success. The Negroes sold a lot of tickets to the white people for whom they worked. The front rows cost fifty cents and were filled with white people. The rest of the seats cost twenty-five cents and were filled with Negroes. There was much noise as the little old church filled. People walked up and down, looking for their seats.

While he was playing Brahms on a violin from Vienna in a Negro church in Hopkinsville, Missouri, for listeners who were poor white people and even poorer Negroes, the sick young man thought of his old dream. This dream could not come true now. It was a dream of a great stage in a large concert hall where thousands of people looked up at him as they listened to his music.

Now he was giving his first concert in America for his mother in the Negro church, for his white and black listeners. And they were looking at him. They were all looking at him. The white people in the front rows and the Negroes in the back.

He was thinking of the past, of his childhood. He remembered the old Kreisler record they had at home. Nobody liked it but Roy, and he played it again and again. Then his mother got a violin for him, but half the time she didn't have the money to pay old man Miller for his violin lessons every week. Roy remembered how his mother had cried when he went away with a group of Negro-musicians, who played Negro songs all over the South.

Then he had a job with a night-club jazz-band in Chicago. After that he got a contract to go to Berlin and play in an orchestra there.

Suddenly he noticed a thin white woman in a cheap coat and red hat, who was looking at him from the first row.

"What does the music give you? What do you want from me?" Roy thought about her.

He looked at all those dark girls back there in the crowd. Most of them had never heard good classical music. Now for the first time in their life they saw a Negro, who had come home from abroad, playing a violin. They were looking proudly at him over the heads of the white people in the first rows, over the head of the white woman in the cheap coat and red hat....

"Who are you, lady?" he thought.

When the concert was over, even some of the white people shook hands with Roy and said it was wonderful. The Negroes said, "Boy, you really can play!" Roy was trembling a little and his eyes burnt and he wanted very much to cough. But he smiled and he held out his hot hand to everybody. The woman in the red hat waited at the end of the room.

After many of the people had gone away, she cameup to Roy and shook hands with him. She spoke of symphony concerts in other cities of Missouri; she said she was a teacher of music, of piano and violin, but she had no pupils like Roy, that never in the town of Hopkinsville had anyone else played so beautifully. Roy looked into her thin, white face and was glad that she loved music.

"That's Miss Reese," his mother told him after she had gone. "An old music teacher at the white high school."

"Yes, Mother," said Roy. "She understands music.

Next time he saw Miss Reese at the white high school. One morning a note came asking him if he would play for her music class some day. She would accompany him if he brought his music. She had told her students about Bach and Mozart, and she would be very grateful if Roy visited the school and played those two great masters for her young people. She wrote him a nice note on clean white paper.

"That Miss Reese is a very nice woman," Mrs. Williams said to her boy. "She sends for you to play at the school. I have never heard of a Negro who was invited there for anything but cleaning up, and I have been in Hopkinsville a long time. Go and play for them, son."

Roy played. But it was one of those days when his throat was hot and dry and his eyes burnt. He had been coughing all morning and as he played he breathed with great difficulty. He played badly. But Miss Reese was more than kind to him. She accompanied him on the piano. And when he had finished, she turned to the class of white children and said, "This is art, my dear young people, this is true art!"

The pupils went home that afternoon and told their parents that a dressed-up nigger had come to school with a violin and played a lot of funny music which nobody but Miss Reese liked. They also said that Miss Reese had smiled and said, "Wonderful!" and had even shaken hands with the nigger, when he went out.

Roy went home. He was very ill these days, getting thinner and thinner all the time, weaker and weaker. Sometimes he did not play at all. Often he did not eat the food his mother cooked for him, or that his sister brought from the place vrhere she vrorked. Sometimes he was so restless and hot in the night that he got up and dressed and then walked the streets of the little town at ten and eleven o'clock after nearly every one else had gone to bed. Midnight was late in Hopkinsville. But for years Roy had worked at night. It was hard f or him to sleep before midnight now.

But one night he walked out of the house for the last time.

In the street it was very quiet. The trees stood silent in the moonlight. Roy walked under the dry falling leaves towards the centre of the town, breathing in the night air. Night and the streets always made him f eel better. He remembered the streets of Paris and Berlin. He remembered Vienna. Now like a dream that he had ever been in Europe at all, he thought. Ma never had any money. With the greatest difficulty her children were able to finish the grade school. There was no high school for Negroes in Hopkinsville. In order to get further education he had to run away from home with a Negro show. Then that chance of going to Berlin with a jazz-band. And his violin had been his best friend all the time. Jazz at night and the classics in the morning at his lessons with the best teachers that his earnings could pay. It was hard work and hard practice. Music, real music! Then he began to cough in Berlin.

Roy was passing lots of people now in the bright lights of Main Street, but he saw none of them. He saw only dreams and memories, and heard music. Suddenly a thin woman in a cheap coat and red hat, a white woman, stepping out of a store just as Roy passed, said pleasantly to him, "Good evening."

Roy stopped, also said, "Good evening, Miss Reese," and was glad to see her. Forgetting he wasn't in Europe, he took off his hat and gloves, and held out his hand to this lady who understood music. They smiled at each other, the sick young Negro and the middleaged music teacher in the light of Main Street. Then she asked him if he was still working on the Sarasate.

Roy opened his mouth to answer when he saw the woman's face suddenly grow pale with horror. Before he could turn round to see what her eyes had seen, he felt a heavy fist strike his face. There was a flash of lightning in his head as he f ell down. Miss Reese screamed. The street near them filled with white young men with red necks, open shirts and fists ready to strike. They had seen a Negro talking to a white woman — insulting a White Woman — attacking a White Woman! They had seen Roy take off his gloves and when Miss Reese screamed when Roy whs struck, they wee sure he had insulted her. Yes, he had. Yes, sir!

So they knocked Roy down. They trampled on his hat and cane and gloves, and all of them tried to pick him up — so that someone else could have the pleasure of knocking him down again. They struggled over the privilege of knocking him down.

Roy looked up from the ground at the white men around him. His mouth was full of blood and his eyes burnt. His clothes were dirty. He was wondering why Miss Reese had stopped him to ask about the Sarasate. He knew he would never get home to his mother now.

The young Negro whose name was Roy Williams began to choke from the blood in his mouth. He didn't hear the sound of their voices or the trampling of their feet any longer. He saw only the moonlight, and his ears were filled with a thousand notes, like a Beethoven sonata…

NOTES:

1. nigger — черномазый;

2. God dawn! — Черт возьми;

3. Kreisler — Крейслер, выдающийся австрийский скрипач.

Exercises and Assignments on the Text

Unit 18

PLEDGER’S WAY HOME

(from The Great Midland by A. Saxton)

Pledger gave part of his pay for a ticket to Chicago. Through the long night he lay asleep, with his head against the arm of his seat, thinking how it would be when he stepped down from the train and Sarah came towards him along the platform. The cold of the winter night came through the windows. Pledger wrapped himself up in his coat.

Towards morning the train stopped in an Indian town. He woke up and got down to the platform, where he began to walk up and down. He felt cold. He walked fast across the street from the station for a cup of coffee. A few people were in the restaurant eating breakfast and Pledger felt the American smell of coffee and toast and bacon. Smiling happily, he sat down at the counter and took the menu.

The counterman was standing over him, young, white and self-important.

“What do you want here?”

“Coffee and fried eggs”, Pledger said calmly.

“We do not serve coloured here”.

Pledger looked at the man attentively for a moment before he understood. Getting up from the chair, Pledger lifted his brown hands in the air. Then he let them fall. He was making an effort to control himself. He saw the other people in the restaurant watching him with expressionless faces. The door closed behind him. He was no longer hungry and now he did not even feel angry. He crossed the street and walked down to the end of the train.

He felt empty and bitter and hurt because of what had been done to him. For a moment he remembered that a Marshal of France had pinned to the flag of his regiment the Cross of War, he remembered the French girls who had kissed the Negro soldiers and cried over them, and the Mayor of New York standing with his hat in his hands. But now he was waking up; it seemed that the people who had been his friends had gone. He found himself alone in the winter daylight, among the snow-covered fields.

He got on the train and took his set. He sat deep in thought through the long hours as the train ran towards Chicago.

Exercises and Assignments on the Text

Unit 19

NO STORY by O. Henry

I was doing work on a newspaper.

One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table.

Tripp was something in the mechanical department. He was about twenty-five and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red whiskers that looked like a door-mat. He was pale and unhealthy and miserable and was always borrowing sums of money from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was his limit. When he leaned on my table he held one hand with the other to keep both from shaking. Whisky.

"Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes it?" He was looking more miserable than I had ever seen him.

"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp looking at me with his dog-like eves.

That day I had managed to get five dollars for my Sunday story. "I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly, "and four besides. And I had hard work getting them. And I need them all."

"I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, "I thought you'd like to get a good story. I've got a really fine one for you. It'll probably cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out of it myself."

"What is the story?" I asked.

"It's girl. A beauty. She has lived all her life on Long Island and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find George Brown in New York City! What do you think of that?! I talked to her. It's like this. Some years ago George set off for New York to make his fortune. He did not reappear. Now there's a young farmer named Dodd she's going to marry next week. But Ada — her name's Ada Lowery — couldn't forget George, so this morning she saddled a horse and rode eight miles to the railway station to catch the 6.45 a.m. train. She came to the city to look for George. She must have thought the first person she inquired of would tell her where her George was! You ought to see her! What could I do? She had paid her last cent f or her railroad ticket. I couldn't leave her in the street, could I? I took her to a boarding-house. She has to pay a dollar to the landlady. That's the price per day."

"That's no story," said I. "Every ferry-boat brings or takes away girls from Long Island."

Tripp looked disappointed. "Can't you see what an amazing story it would make? You ought to get fifteen dollars for it. And it'll cost you only four, so you'll make a profit of eleven dollars."

"How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked suspiciously.

"One dollar to the landlady and two dollars to pay the girl's fare back home."

"And the fourth?" I inquired.

"One dollar to me," said Tripp. "Don't you see," he insisted, "that the girl has got to get back home today?"

And then I began to feel what is known as the sense of duty. In a kind of cold anger I put on my coat and hat. But I swore to myself that Tripp would not get the dollar.

Tripp took me in a street-car to the boarding-house. I paid the fares.

In a dim parlour a girl sat crying quietly and eating candy out of a paper bag. She was a real beauty. Crying only made her eyes brighter.

"My friend, Mr. Chalmers. He is a reporter," said Tripp "and he will tell you, Miss Lowery, what's best to do."

I felt ashamed of being introduced as Tripp's friend in the presence of such beauty. "Why — er — Miss Lowery," I began feeling terribly awkward, "will you tell me the circumstances of the case?"

"Oh," said Miss Lowery, "there aren't any circumstances, really. You see, everything is fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday. He's got one of the best f arms on the Island. But last night I got to thinking about G — George —"

"You see, I can't help it. George and I loved each other since we were children. Four years go he went to the city. He said he was going to be a policeman of a railroad president or something. And then he was coming back for me. But I never heard from him any more. And I — I — liked him."

"Now, Miss Lowery," broke in Tripp, "you like this young man, Dodd, don't you? He's all right, and good to you, isn't he?"

"Of course I like him. And of course he's good to me. He's promised me an automobile and a motorboat. But somehow I couldn't help thinking about George. Something must have happened to him or he would have written. On the day he left, he got a hammer and a chisel and cut a cent into two pieces. I took one piece and he took the other, and we promised to be true to each other and always keep the pieces till we saw each other again. I've got mine at home. I guess I was silly to come here. I never realised what a big place it is."

Tripp broke in with an awkward little laugh. "Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city. He may have met another girl or something. You go back home, and you'll be all right."

In the end we persuaded Miss Lowery to go back home. The three of us then hurried to the ferry, and there I f ound the price of the ticket to be but a dollar and eighty cents. I bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferry-boat and stood watching her wave her handkerchief at us. And then Tripp and I f aced each other.

"Can't you get a story out of it?" he asked. "Some sort of a story?"

"Not a line," said I.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. There was disappointment in his tone. Tripp unbuttoned his shabby coat to reach for something that had once been a handkerchief. As he did so I saw something shining on his cheap watch-chain. It was the half of a silver cent that had been cut in halves with a chisel.

"What?!" I exclaimed looking at him in amazement.

"Oh yes," he replied. "George Brown, or Tripp. What's the use?"

Exercises and Assignments on the Text