Рассказы

 
 
О.Генри
0 36  
Рассказы: Книга для чтения на английском 
языке / Адаптация, комментарии, словарь, упражнения Ю.Б. Голицынского. – СПб.: КАРО, 2010. – 
160 с.: ил. – (Серия «Reading with exercises»).

 
 
 
ISBN 978-5-9925-0553-5.

В книгу вошли рассказы О.Генри «Комната на чердаке», 
«Купидон à la Carte», «Из любви к искусству», «Бабье лето 
Джонсона Сухого Лога» и др. Рассказы снабжены упражнениями на понимание текста, перевод и совершенствование произношения. 
Книга предназначена для учащихся старших классов школ, 
студентов и всех самостоятельно изучающих английский язык. 
Все тексты и фонетические упражнения записаны на компактдиск. Прослушивание аудиозаписи помогает развить навыки 
восприятия английской речи на слух.

УДК 373.167.1:820/89
ББК 81.2 Англ-922

УДК 373.167.1:820/89
ББК 81.2 Англ-922
 
0 36

Художник
С. И. Ващенок

© КАРО, 2000
Все права защищены
ISBN 978-5-9925-0553-5

В дополнение к книге можно приобрести 
тематический аудиоматериал на диске в формате МР3, 
подготовленный издательством

THE SKYLIGHT ROOM

First Mrs. Parker1 will show you the double parlours. You will not dare to interrupt her description 
of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then, 
when you manage to stammer the confes sion that 
you are neither a doctor nor a dentist, Mrs. Par ker’s 
reaction will be such that you will never afterwards 
forgive your parents, who did not train you up in 
one of the professions that fi tted Mrs. Parker’s parlours. 
Next you will ascend one fl ight of stairs and look 
at the second-fl oor apartment at $8 a week, which 
has a double front room with a private bath. Then 
you will manage to babble that you want something 
still cheaper, and if you survive Mrs. Parker’s scorn, 
you will be taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s2 large room 
on the third fl oor. Mr. Skidder’s room is not vacant. 
He writes plays and smokes cigarettes in it all day 
long. But every room-hunter is made to visit his room 
to admire the curtains on the windows. After each 
visit, Mr. Skidder, afraid to be turned out, raises his 
rent.
Then — oh, then — if you still stand on your feet, 
with your hot hand clutching the three moist dol
1 Mrs. Parker ['pC:kA] — миссис Паркер
2 Mr. Skidder ['skIdA] — мистер Скиддер

O. Henry. Stories

lars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaim your hideous and culpable poverty, Mrs. Parker will no longer 
be your guide. She will shout loudly the word “Clara1,” 
she will show you her back, and march downstairs. 
Then Clara, the coloured maid, will escort you up 
the carpeted ladder that leads to the fourth fl oor, 
and show you the Skylight Room. It occupies 7 by 8 
feet of fl oor-space in the middle of the hall. On each 
side of it there is a dark closet and a store-room.
Inside the room there is an iron bed, a washstand 
and a chair. A shelf serves for a dressing-table. The 
four bare walls seem to close in upon you like the 
sides of a coffi n. Your hand will creep to your throat, 
you will gasp, you will look up as from a well — and 
breathe once more. Through the glass of the little 
skylight you will see a square of blue sky.
“Two dollars, sir,” Clara will say in a contemptuous tone. 

One day Miss Leeson2 came looking for a room. 
She carried a big typewriter, too big for her little fi gure. She was a very little girl, with large blue eyes 
and long and thick hair.
Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. “In 
this closet,” she said, “one could keep a skeleton or 
anaesthetic or —”
“But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist,” said Miss 
Leeson with a shiver.
Mrs. Parker gave her the pitying, sneering, icy 
stare that she kept for those who were not doctors 

1 Clara ['klLArA] — Клара
2 Miss Leeson [li:sn] — мисс Лисон

The Skylight Room

or dentists, and led the way to the second-fl oor apartment.
“Eight dollars?” said Miss Leeson. “Dear me! I am 
not so rich. I am just a poor working girl. Show me 
something cheaper.”
When Mrs. Parker knocked at the door on the 
third fl oor, Mr. Skidder jumped and dropped cigarette stubs on the fl oor.
“Excuse me, Mr. Skidder,” said Mrs. Parker, with 
her demon’s smile. “I didn’t know you were in. I asked 
the lady to have a look at your window curt ains.”
“They are wonderful,” said Miss Leeson, smil ing 
like an angel.
After they had gone, Mr. Skidder quickly erased 
the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserted a small one with heavy 
bright hair and large blue eyes. 
Mrs. Parker called Clara and turned her back on1 
Miss Leeson. Clara took her upstairs to the Skylight 
Room and said, “Two dollars.”
“I’ll take it,” sighed Miss Leeson, sitting down upon the squeaky iron bed.
Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. In the 
evening she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. 
Sometimes she had no work in the evening, and 
then she would sit on the steps of the high porch 
with the other tenants. Miss Leeson was gay-hearted 
and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let 
Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy.

1 turned her back on — (разг.) повернулась спиной к

O. Henry. Stories

The gentlemen tenants rejoiced whenever Miss 
Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or 
two. But Miss Longnecker1, the tall blonde who 
taught in a public school and said “Well, really!” to 
everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. 
And Miss Dorn2, who worked in a department store, 
sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat 
on the middle step, and the men would quickly group 
around her.
Especially Mr. Skidder, who was in love with her 
and hoped to marry her. And especially Mr. Hoover3, who was forty-fi ve, fat and foolish. And especially very young Mr. Evans4, who deliberately 
coughed to induce her to ask him to give up smoking. The men declared that she was the best creature in the world, but the sniffs on the top step and 
the lower step were implacable.
As Mrs. Parker’s tenants were sitting thus one 
summer evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the 
sky and cried with delight:
“Why, there’s Billy Jackson5! I can see him from 
down here, too!”
All looked up — some at the windows of skyscrapers, some at the sky, looking for a plane piloted by 
a man whose name was Billy Jackson.
“It’s that star,” explained Miss Leeson, pointing 
with a tiny fi nger. “Not the big one that twinkles — 

1 Miss Longnecker ['lDNnekA] — мисс Лонгнекер
2 Miss Dorn [dD:n] — мисс Дорн
3 Mr. Hoover ['hu:vA] — мистер Гувер
4 Mr. Evans ['i:vAnz] — мистер Ивенс
5 Billy Jackson ['bIlI 'dZBksn] — Билли Джексон

O. Henry. Stories

the little blue one near it. I can see it every night 
through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson.”
“Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “I didn’t 
know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson.”
“Oh yes,” said the small star-gazer, laughing, 
“I know as much as any of them about the style of 
sleeves they are going to wear next fall in Mars1.”
“Well, really,” said Miss Longnecker. “The star 
you speak about is Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia2. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and 
its meridian passage is — 3”
“Oh,” said the very young Mr. Evans, “I think 
Billy Jackson is a much better name for it.”
“I agree,” said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing. “I 
think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name 
stars as any of those old astrologers had.”
“Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker.
“I wonder whether it’s a shooting star,” remarked 
Miss Dorn.
“He doesn’t look very bright from down here,” said 
Miss Leeson. “You ought to see him from my room. 
You know you can see stars even in the daytime from 
the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the 
shaft of a coal-mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look 
like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her 
 kimono with.”

There came a time after that when Miss Leeson 
brought no papers home to copy. And when she went 

1 Mars [mC:z] — Марс
2 Gamma ['MBmA] of the constellation Cassiopeia 
[,kBsIA'pi:A] — Гамма из созвездия Кассиопея
3 its meridian passage — она проходит через меридиан

The Skylight Room

in the morning, instead of working, she went from 
offi ce to offi ce, asking if they needed a typist and 
getting cold refusals. This went on for some time.
There came an evening when she wearily climbed 
Mrs. Parker’s porch at the hour when she always 
returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But this 
time she had had no dinner.
As she stepped into the hall, Mr. Hoover met her 
and seized his chance. He asked her to marry him, 
and his fat fi gure hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the railing. He tried 
to take her hand, and she raised it and slapped him 
weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder’s 
door, crawled up the carpeted ladder, then at last 
she opened the door of the skylight room.
She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. 
She fell upon the iron bed, and then she slowly raised 
her heavy eyelids, and smiled.
For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm 
and bright and constant through the skylight. There 
was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of 
blackness, with only that small square of pallid light 
around the star which she had so whimsically and 
oh, so ineffectually, named. Miss Longnecker must 
be right: it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not 
let it be Gamma.
As she lay on her back, she tried twice to raise 
her arm. The third time she put two thin fi ngers to 
her lips and blew a kiss1 out of the black pit to Billy 
Jackson. Her arm fell back limply.

1 blew a kiss — (разг.) послала воздушный поцелуй

O. Henry. Stories

“Good-bye, Billy,” she murmured faintly. “You are 
millions of miles away. But you kept where I could 
see you most of the time, up there, when there wasn’t 
anything else but darkness to look at, didn’t you?... 
Millions of miles... Good-bye, Billy Jackson.”
Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked 
at ten the next day, and they forced it open. Vinegar, 
and the slapping of wrists produced no effect. Then 
some one ran to phone for an ambulance.
In due time1 an ambulance came up to the door, 
and the capable young doctor, in his white linen coat, 
ready, active, confi dent, with his smooth face half 
debonair, half grim, ran up the steps.
“Ambulance call to 492,” he said briefl y. “What’s 
the trouble?”
“Oh yes, doctor,” sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though 
her own trouble was the greatest. I can’t think what 
can be the matter with her. She is unconscious, and 
nothing that we did could help. It’s a young woman, 
a Miss Elsie3 — yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my house —”
“What room?” cried the doctor in a terrible voice, 
which shocked Mrs. Parker. 
“The skylight room. It —”
Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with 
the location of skylight rooms. He ran up the stairs, 
four at a time4. Mrs. Parker followed slowly, as her 
dignity demanded. When she reached the fi rst land
1 In due time — В надлежащее время
2 Ambulance ['BmbjulAns] call to 49 — Вызов скорой 
помощи в дом номер 49
3 Elsie ['elsI] — Элси
4 four at a time — (зд.) перепрыгивая через четыре 
ступеньки за раз