Читать книгу The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann онлайн

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Thus it happened that, while the Major and I were sitting enjoying an extraordinary season of calm, suddenly there came a thundering sound from the stairway. A troop of horse could hardly have made a greater uproar, and yet I knew that fewer than half a dozen people were ascending the steps. Some one stumbled and caught himself, and the multiplied and magnified reverberations were as loud as if the roof had caved in, carrying the better part of the structure with it. Some one laughed at the misstep, and the sound came to our ears with the deafening effect of an explosion. The party filed with a dull roar into one of the front rooms, the office of a harum-scarum young lawyer who had more empty bottles behind his door than he had ever had briefs on his desk.

“Well, the great Gemini!” exclaimed Major Perdue, “how do you manage to stand that sort of thing?”

I shrugged my shoulders and laughed, and was about to begin anew a very old tirade against caves and halls of thunder, when the Major raised a warning hand. Some one was saying——