Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 118

I have quite a number of small sums which are always eluding my poverty stricken grasp. However I am not doing so badly; it may interest you to see my exact financial position at present. It might be headed Great Expectations.

Moneys in hand July 15^th £2/5/0

Due from Boss on Deaclyon plaster purchased 5d

Mrs Thompson. Arthur Sr. 10/6

Salary for next 4 months £8

Promised by patient with herpes zoster if I can cure him in a given time, viz one calendar month 10/

From Chambers (?)

For ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’ (?)

Extra screw from the Governor for zeal and attention in bookkeeping…something sometime.

Besides that I can always allow 5/ a month winnings at vingt-et-une. And old Gleiwitz owes me 15/ which I intend to have or I’ll make Birmingham too hot to hold him, so hurrah for the man of money!

I have had a deep grief this morning, my young heart is bruised and bleeding. I always smoke clay pipes now, and I had such a beauty, black as coal all through my own smoking, and this morning it fell out of my pocket and smashed. I am going up to town to buy a good Dublin one, so you may deduct the penny from my list. It was such a nice pipe! ‘Oh, the pity of it, Iago!’

Hoare’s children are boy and girl, 6 and 10. Very nice children, if they weren’t spoiled. I spend half my spare time cutting out big English Guardsmen and little French Zouaves, and making them stand and fight for them, also teaching Mick to box.

(Corporal Brewster tries to fill his clay pipe, but drops it. It breaks, and he bursts into tears with the long helpless sobs of a child.)

Corporal: I’ve broke my pipe! my pipe!

Norah (running to him and soothing him): Don’t, Uncle, oh, don’t!

We can easy get another.

—A Story of Waterloo