Читать книгу Aunt Olive in Bohemia онлайн

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And so say all of we.”

With a little sigh of supreme content Miss Mason uttered the one word:

“Bohemia!”

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BARNABAS came into his garden in the early morning sunshine. His hair was still a little wet, for he had only just had his bath. He was wearing an old Turkish dressing-gown, purple bedroom slippers, and was smoking a cigarette.

A light wind was blowing through the courtyard. It scattered the pink petals of a too full-blown la France rose upon the garden path. They chased each other round in a little mad dance, first down the path, then in circles at the foot of the statue of a little faun playing on a long thin reed. The faun looked at them with mocking, laughing eyes, while he piped to their dancing.

A thrush in the laburnum tree looked at Barnabas for a moment, but as it had already got used to the fact that he was neither a cat nor a boy with a stone handy, it began to sing a sweet full-throated song.

Barnabas fingered a la France rosebud. There were half a dozen little green blights clinging to the petals. He blew a cloud of tobacco smoke round it. The blights smiled at him, so to speak. It would require something stronger than cigarette smoke to remove them from their lodging. Barnabas let go his hold on the rosebud.