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Commentary. plaid shirt –рубашка в клетку, ковбойка (plaid – плед, ткань в шотландскую клетку)

plaid shirt – рубашка в клетку, ковбойка (plaid – плед, ткань в шотландскую клетку)

screen door –наружная дверь с противомоскитной сеткой

Quaker village – деревня квакеров (протестантская секта, возникшая в Англии в 17 в. и в настоящее время имеющая около 200 тыс. сторонников. Общины квакеров имеются в Англии, Канаде, Вост. Африке и в США, где центром этого учения считаются штат Пенсильвания и один из главных городов штата г. Филадельфия).

narrow gauge trains – узкоколейные поезда (зд. модель железной дороги)

Meanie – (дет.) придира, жадина

channelled, shackles, low-speed torque – части автомобиля

buttonwood tree – американский платан (Platanus Occidentalis)

Exercise 1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

1. drowsy ['drauzI] 6. inadvertent [LInRd'vR:t(R)nt]

2. abhorence [Rb'hOr(R)ns] 7. sedately [sI'deItlI]

3. profess [prR'fes] 8. impervious [Im'pR:vjRs]

4. wager ['weIdGR] 9. conspicuous [kRn'spIkjuRs]

5. covertly ['kAvRlI] 10. repertoire ['repRtwQ:]

Exercise 2. Read the following extract:

Just as Jane got out of bed the next morning, a Western Union messenger arrived at the house next door. With sleepy curiosity she watched him come and go. Maybe Mr. Sanderson had relented after all.

But when she went outside to get the morning paper a few minutes later, Ken was sitting on his front steps, a yellow telegraph blank in his hands. The deep frown that pulled his eyebrows together told her the news wasn’t good.

“Read this,” he ordered. “Great stuff!”

The night letter was fairly lengthy. “Dear son, I know you are disappointed about the car, but I want you to try to understand my point of view. At seventeen, your grandfather came to this country with nothing but the clothes on his back. By dint of hard work and thrift he was able to send me to college, so that I in turn can give you a still better chance. But we have not arrived at the stage where you can deliver flowers or groceries or anything else by Cadillac. Ask me something reasonable and you won’t get turned down.”

Jane thought it was a sensible and fatherly point of view, but she was afraid to say so. “Well”, she stalled.

“The old goat!” flared Ken.

“Kenneth Sanderson!” Jane was thoroughly shocked.

“I don’t care,” muttered the boy. “He’s being middle-aged and stuffy; that’s what he’s being. If I give up this Caddy and get a line on the kind of hot rod the other fellows buy, he’ll object to that on the theory it’s unsafe. You wait and see.”

Jane bit her lip. She was afraid Ken was right. Not long ago she had been present at one of Mr. Sanderson’s vehement speeches on the risks of riding in jalopies. “At least a Cadillac would be a heavy, sturdy sort of car, not a rattletrap held together by rubber bands and chewing gum,” she mused. “Why don’t you tackle him with that one argument and skip everything else?”

Ken shrugged disconsolately. “Wouldn’t work.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Long-distance calls cost money,” Ken grumbled.

“So do Cadillacs,” mentioned Jane, as a parting thrust.

She took the newspaper in to her father, who was drinking his second cup of coffee, with a commuter’s eye on the clock.

“Thanks, chicken,” he said casually. “Getting tired of summer? Anxious for school to start?”

“Not really,” Jane said.

Mr. Howard wasn’t surprised. “Belinda tells me she’s ready and waiting,” he mentioned. “That’s something of a shock.”

“She thinks high school is going to be too, too utterly,” said Jane, paraphrasing one of her sister’s favorite comic strips.

Her father grinned companionably as he put his napkin on the table. “Innocence is a beautiful thing.”

“And that is an interesting phrase to toss at the morning,” said Mrs. Howard, as she came in from the kitchen. She looked drowsy and attractively youthful in her dark-blue Bermuda shorts and plaid shirt. To Jane she said, “There’s orange juice in the refrigerator, dear. Would you like an egg?” Then, without waiting for a reply, she spoke to her husband, lifting her face to be kissed. “Have a good day.”

Jane’s father patter her on the head with his folded newspaper and strode out of the room, looking well-tailored and handsome in his city clothes. “Try to get home on the six-o’clock, Mike,” his wife called after him. “We’re due at the Bancrofts’ at seven.”

The groan which preceded the slamming of the screen door was anticipated by both Jane and her mother. Their eyes met across the breakfast table and they smiled knowing that the man of the house always professed a complete abhorrence to dinner parties, especially if the guests numbered more then six.

“Is this going to be a big do?” Jane murmured.

“I’m afraid so,” her mother sighed. Then she rallied. “He’ll have a good time when he gets there. He always does.”

Jane knew, without asking, that her father was popular. His dark, almost somber good looks, enlivened by an unexpectedly boyish smile, were definitely appealing to women, and his vitality and broad range of interest in both sports and business made him well liked by most men.

If occasionally he was moody, and inclined to fret about the “good old days” when Brookfield was a Quaker village instead of a growing suburban town, his family forgave him. Linda flirted with her father and consequently he adored her, but it was Jane who really understood him. She knew she had acquired his resentment of change, his anxiety to maintain the status quo.

Jane had just finished her orange juice when the screen door slammed again, and Ken burst into the dining room. “By golly, it worked!” he shouted.

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. He fell for it – hook, line and sinker. That was the angle all right. Something big and safe.”

“Kenneth dear, will you just sit down and stop talking and in riddles,” Mrs. Howard suggested. “It’s very early in the morning and-”

“Sorry, Mrs. Howard.” Ken slipped into the chair vacated by Jane’s father. “It’s just this. I’m going to buy a Cadillac.”

Mrs. Howard set her coffee cup very carefully back in the saucer. “Now I’ve heard everything,” she said.

But Ken was so full of self-importance that adults astonishment scarcely rippled his stream of thought.

“You know that deal of ours,” he said to Jane. “It’s still all right, isn’t it? Because I told Pop...”

“Oh, sure.” Jane glanced at her mother covertly, then nodded at Ken with great vigor, trying to indicate that this was a private affair, better conducted without adult supervision.

“What deal?” Belinda yawned from the doorway barefoot, and wearing a white towelling peignoir over her pajamas, she looked like a sleepy kitten. “Hi, everybody,” she said. “Hi, Ken.”

Ken muttered a greeting, but scarcely glanced at her. He had caught Jane’s signal and wanted to change the subject before Linda pressed the point. His tactic was to address Mrs. Howard directly. “It’s a real old job, but it’s sound,” he explained. “At least, I think so. And if it isn’t, I can take it apart and put it together again.” At this prospect his face positively glowed.

Reaching for the coffeepot, Mrs. Howard shook her head in mock despair. “That’s just dandy. I’ll wager your mother can hardly wait.”

“I haven’t told her yet,” Ken admitted. “I wanted to see Jane first.”

* * *

Ken’s triumphal home-coming with the Cadillac was timed with an inadvertent sense of theater. He rolled down Franklin Street between the arching maples and turned with a flourish into the Sanderson drive at exactly four in the afternoon.

This assured him of an audience, because all the small fry in the block were up from their naps, full of renewed energy and ready to welcome just such a diversion. Encouraged by George, who began to jump up and down and shout with excitement, they gathered around Ken’s great big car and swarmed over the fenders and opened and shut the doors.

“Hey, cut it out, the kids!” Ken scolded, but Jane could tell by his tone of voice that he wasn’t really displeased. She herself approached very sedately, along with her mother and Mrs. Sanderson, who had been darning socks on the Howards’ side porch.

“Well,” said Ken, like a conquering hero, “there she is!” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Not bad, eh?”

In the words was more than pride of proprietorship. They bespoke anticipation, delight, and a sense of adventure. As Ken raised the hood of the outmoded Fleet-wood sedan and began to expound on a Cadillac’s lasting virtues, Jane shared something of his feeling. A boy’s first car, she realized, was a soul-stirring experience. And to the extent that a girl can understand, she understood.

Mrs. Sanderson was patient but puzzled. “My goodness, it’s big,” she murmured. “And black. It looks a little like a hearse.”

“Hearse nothing!” retorted Ken, greatly offended. “It was a town car.”

“We live in town,” piped up George. “A Brookfield car, that’s what it is.”

Mrs. Sanderson pulled George to her and ruffed his hair affectionately. “I’m glad you’re happy about it, dear”, she said to Ken, whose head had disappeared under the hood. She was a plump, pleasant woman, whose appearance suited her maternal nature. But Jane had always thought that her first name, Audrey, just didn’t seem to fit.

“Where are you going to keep it?” Mrs. Sanderson asked.

“Right here,” came the muffled reply. “Pop can still have the garage.” He backed out from under the hood to inspect the width of the drive. “Yep. With that little Chewy he can get around me.”

“I must say that’s generous of you,” murmured his mother, with a wink at her next-door neighbours. But Ken was impervious to such irony. “Boy,” he was muttering, “these spark plugs sure need cleaning. I can see I’m going to have a lot of work to do.”

Jane, meanwhile, was searching for something complimentary to say about this antique, in which she had a small investment. But engines were an enigma to her and the several conspicuous rust spots on the Cadillac’s body meant that the paint job wouldn’t bear mentioning. “The upholstery looks all right,” she ventured, as a last resort.

Ken’s head came up like a bird’s. “It’s perfectly good, I’ll have you know.” He rounded the car and jerked open a door. “Look at that, will you?” he invited everyone. “Not a rip, not a tear. Not even very many grease spots.”

This was an understatement, as Jane could readily see. But she looked appreciative and nodded. Maybe she could help him clean it some day, and immediately was surprised at such a housewifely inclination. Maybe... and maybe not.

Because, as far as she could see, Ken was going to be lost to the world for days — perhaps weeks — to come. She was used to his fits of preoccupation. Once narrow-gauge trains had been his passion; then model airplane motors had engrossed him for months. Now that he was confronted with the dream of his life come true, she doubted if he’d even remember to eat.

As a matter of fact, at six o’clock that evening he was still tinkering with the Cadillac, up to his elbows in grease and utterly bemused. When Jane walked down to the dividing hedge, he greeted her without looking up. “I’m going to tear this thing down and put it together right,” he said.

Jane glanced at a bucketful of bolts, springs, and indeterminable parts. “How long will that take?”

Ken shrugged. “I’ve got till school starts.

Mildly, almost timidly, Jane asked, “You haven’t forgotten Trudy’s party tonight, have you?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Ken looked up at Jane in unconcealed annoyance. “Not tonight!”

Nodding, Jane fibbed. “I’d almost forgotten it too.”

“I’m not going,” Ken said firmly. “Why do people have parties in summer anyway?” The thought flashed across Jane’s consciousness that he sounded exactly like her father. But his next remark was typically Ken. “It doesn’t get dark until eight, and I’ve got two good hours.” He glanced lovingly at the car.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Jane, and meant it.

“But you’ll be in the doghouse with Trudy. You know that.”

“I’ll have Mother phone and say I’m sick, or something.”

“As though anybody will believe it.”

Ken threw down a tool and glared at Jane angrily. “Parties!” he snorted, again like her father. “What kind of deal is this?”

“A cook-out. The Blakes have that new outdoor fireplace.”

“What time?”

“Six-thirty. But we could be a little late.”

“I’m not going,” Ken announced even more firmly, after a glance at his watch. “Anyway, I haven’t got time to change.”

“O.K.,” Jane said, accepting this as final. “But don’t expect me to make your excuses. That’s up to you.”

She went back into the house, not particularly concerned. Jane was accustomed to Ken’s company – so accustomed that she rather took it for granted — but she could certainly walk over to Trudy’s alone.

In the living room, however, she was greeted by Linda, who had just come in from playing tennis. “I was on the porch while you were talking,” she said. “You ought to make him go!”

“Make him?” Jane laughed at the very idea. “How can I? Anyway, I don’t really care.”

Belinda looked at her older sister intently. “You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not,” Jane said.

“You mean you don’t really mind going to a party alone?”

“Why should I? It’s just the same old gang.”

Wondering what had impelled Belinda to press the point, Jane went on upstairs.

* * *

The Blake house, in a still older section of town where the houses were larger and more elaborate than on Franklin Street, was built of faded red brick, half-covered with ivy. It looked both substantial and welcoming.

Jane liked the broad center hall which bisected the ground floor and ended in a door opening on the terrace at the rear. She walked through hastily, conscious of being more than a little late, and was at once gathered into the familiar group.

“Ken called and said he couldn’t get here for supper, but he’d come along a little later,” Trudy told her at once. “He sounded very mysterious. What’s up?”

Jane didn’t want to steal his thunder. “Better ask him,” she suggested.

“Meanie,” retorted Trudy, but she smiled when she said it. Jane and she were practically best friends.

The boys were all gathered down on the lawn around the new fireplace, which Gordon Park was feeding with briquettes. A stout, rather solemn boy, he fancied that he did this thing better than anybody else.

Jack Preston and Eric Forte were eyeing the big trays of hamburgers hungrily. “Come on, Gordy,” they kept urging. “Get a move on, can’t you?” Gordon was a junior, and they were both seniors and football men, which gave them a certain prestige.

Trudy thrust a huge wooden bowl of tossed salad into Jane’s hands, and she walked down across the grass and casually joined the group. Sue Harvey and Polly Patterson were buttering rolls, and they called her to come help.

It was just like a dozen other summer parties, except that a full moon gave the scene a special glow. Jane revelled in its very normalcy. It was nice to be in a group where she knew everybody and everybody knew her.

Jane had no illusions about her own position. She wasn’t an extremely popular girl, like Polly Patterson, a good athlete and a wonderful dancer, who was therefore in constant demand. The fact that Polly was both agreeable and stunning made the girls like her, as well as the boys.

Sue Harvey, petite and red-haired, had a sense of humor that could add sparkle to any party, and she was usually the center of the gayest group. Jane herself was accepted, but she wasn’t especially sought after. She suspected quite rightly that she was known as the quiet type.

As often as not, she found herself on the side lines, along with Gordon and others who had no outstanding qualities to make them shine in a group. When she had something to say she said it, but she had no ready flow of small talk, like Sue. And she never seemed to be in on the intrigues and the consequent gossip which fascinated many of the girls.

After supper the boys burned the paper plates and stoked the fire again, while the girls carried the leftovers into the kitchen and cleaned up. When they came back into the garden, Ken had arrived, looking scrubbed and a trifle sheepish, but full of the good news about his car. Already the hotrod crowd was firing questions at him, and words like “channelled” and “shackles” and “low-speed torque” kept flying through the air over Jane’s head. The girls didn’t care what he intended to do with the car. They wanted to know what it looked like and if it would go. When they discovered that it was a Cadillac they squealed in surprise, and for half an hour Ken held the center of the stage. But eventually this and all other subjects of conversation palled. Trudy turned on the record player, and several couples danced on the terrace while the rest stayed down around the fire and started to sing. The competition of the vocal and instrumental music must have sounded highly discordant to the occasional passers-by, but nobody at the party was in the least bothered. They were all too preoccupied.

The crackle of the fire, the smell of the smoke, and the twinkle of soaring fireflies all registered themselves on Jane’s consciousness. She sat with the group of singers, humming the melody of the songs when she forgot the words, and noticed idly that Ken was dancing with Polly, then with Trudy, and laughing more than usual. He was still, she decided, riding the crest of the wave.

But he came over and joined her when the party started to break up at about eleven. “Think we’d better be going along?” he asked.

Jane as equally offhand. “If you do.” She let Ken help her to her feet, then together they walked to the terrace and said their good nights to their hostess.

“It was a lovely party.”

“One of the best.”

Out on the street, unnaturally quiet after the chatter and laughter, they waked along without speaking for almost a block. The moon, hanging like a huge butter-scotch wafer in a feathery frame of the trees, shone down on Jane’s soft hair and on the planes of her slender face. It picked up high lights on her full-skirted dress and glinted on her bare arms and throat. Far more conscious of its brilliance than she was of Ken, she reacted with a start when he spoke.

“You’re not mad at me, are you, Jane?”

“No,” said Jane, without emphasis. “No. Why should I be?”

“About this evening, I mean. Letting you down.”

Jane didn’t explain that she hadn’t felt particularly let down, that in fact she had rather enjoyed the walk over to the Blakes alone. She knew that according to Trudy or Sue she should act offended and hurt, so she would have the fun of making up. But such machinations were not in her line. She was far too forthright to be tempted by them. “It was quite all right, Ken,” she said, without rancour. “I understood – about the car, I mean.”

“It was just that... well, I had forgotten the party. I was excited, I guess.”

“You guess?” As Jane smiled teasingly up at Ken, she felt unusually short and slight. Once they had stood almost shoulder to shoulder, but now he must be almost six feet.

Ken allowed himself to chuckle. “O.K., you win. I’ll admit I’ve never been so thrilled about anything in my whole life.” Surprisingly, and quite spontaneously, he caught Jane’s hand and tucked it through his arm. She pulled away, startled and a little embarrassed. Although the street was quite deserted, she thought it would look odd, if anyone should see them. And it wasn’t like Ken.

“What’s the matter? You are sore at me.”

It was a girl’s sort of gambit – again not like Ken Sanderson. Jane didn’t know how to retaliate. She was overwhelmed, for a moment, by a feeling of helplessness. Without speaking, she shook her head.

Then, quite unconsciously, she started to walk a little faster, but Ken held her back with a hand under her elbow; and once more his touch was so unexpected that it made her awkward and tremulous. “Slow up,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

Jane matched her steps to his, and this time she didn’t pull away.

“I’m probably still feeling light-headed, or I wouldn’t say this,” Ken muttered, as though he were thinking out loud. “But I sort of think you ought to know... I appreciate... your lending me money and standing by me, and all.”

Eyes on the ground, Jane couldn’t reply, but she was genuinely touched. Speeches of this sort were not in Ken’s repertoire. It must have cost him quite an effort.

“And I want you to know, too, that... that I... think you’re swell.”

Jane’s heart began to hammer curiously, and she felt almost frightened. She scarcely realized that they had stopped walking and were standing in a pool of darkness under a huge buttonwood tree. Ken took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. Jane was suddenly aware that he was going to kiss her – Ken!

Not that he hadn’t kissed her before — in games and in casual good nights – but this was different. This was serious, and Jane was quite unprepared. They were within a few doors of home, and her reaction was quick and instinctive. She twisted out of his grasp and ran.

Exercise 3. Find the following words and word combinations in the text you have read. Write out and learn the pronunciation. Give the Russian equivalents:

1. to tackle smb with smth

2. to be inclined to do smth

3. to fall for smth

4. to talk in riddles

5. to press the point

6. to stick hands in the pockets

7. to be confronted with

8. to change (clothes)

9. to make one’s excuses

10. to be in demand

11. to fire questions at smb

12. to be preoccupied with smth

13. to let smb down

14. to be sore at smb

15. to be overwhelmed by

16. to stand by smb

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