75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

‘Don’t Mr. Saunders! Don’t! How perfectly horrid! Now tell us another one, do. Only a really creepy one, please!’

* * * * *

‘Here’s a pretty mess!’ said Eustace on the following day as he threw a letter across the table to Saunders. ‘It’s your affair, though. Mrs. Merrit, if I understand it, gives a month’s notice.’ ‘Oh, that’s quite absurd on Mrs. Merrit’s part,’ Saunders replied. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Let’s see what she says.’

‘DEAR SIR,’ he read, ‘this is to let you know that I must give you a month’s notice as from Tuesday the 13th. For a long time I’ve felt the place too big for me, but when Jane Parfit, and Emma Laidlaw go off with scarcely as much as an “if you please,” after frightening the wits out of the other girls, so that they can’t turn out a room by themselves or walk alone down the stairs for fear of treading on half-frozen toads or hearing it run along the passages at night, all I can say is that it’s no place for me. So I must ask you, Mr. Borlsover, sir, to find a new housekeeper that has no objection to large and lonely houses, which some people do say, not that I believe them for a minute, my poor mother always having been a Wesleyan [277] , are haunted.

‘Yours faithfully, ELIZABETH MERRIT.

‘P.S. – I should be obliged if you would give my respects to Mr. Saunders. I hope that he won’t run no risks with his cold.’