Читать книгу The Village on Horseback - Jesse Ball - Страница 18

A man was out taking the summer air when along the lane he saw a crowd approaching. Perhaps not a crowd. They were arrayed in a line, and each suitor was grander in dress and manner than the one who came before. The line stretched endlessly, over hill and dale. On the farthest hilltop, the man could see the crowns of kings and the scepters of emperors glinting in the sunlight. Where are they going? he inquired of the first, but his question went unanswered. Where are you going? he asked again. The man did not join the line, but went humbly beneath his roof and began to prepare for himself the smallest of meals, which he would eat without haste by the window, which he would eat with a tiny wooden spoon, making no noise that one might hear, were one to pass that way.