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Jerome K. Jerome / Джером Клапка Джером

Three Men on the Bummel / Трое на четырех колесах. Книга для чтения на английском языке

© КАРО, 2007

Chapter I

“What we want,” said Harris, “is a change. ”

“You know what I mean,” he said, “a complete change. ”

The question was how to get it.

George suggested “business. ” It was the sort of suggestion George would make. A bachelor thinks a married woman doesn’t know enough to get out of the way of a steam-roller.

I knew a young fellow once, an engineer, who thought he would go to Vienna “on business. ” His wife wanted to know “what business?” He told her it would be his duty to visit the mines in the neighbourhood of the Austrian capital, and to make reports. She said she would go with him; she was that sort of woman. He tried to dissuade her: he told her that a mine was no place for a beautiful woman. She said she felt that herself, and that therefore she did not intend to accompany him down the shafts; she would see him off in the morning, and then amuse herself until his return, looking round the Vienna shops, and buying a few things she might want. Having started the idea, he did not see very well how to get out of it; and for ten long summer days he did visit the mines in the neighbourhood of Vienna, and in the evening wrote reports about them, which she posted for him to his firm, who didn’t want them.