Английский для смелых. Истории о духах и привидениях / Great Ghost Stories

 I wonder, by the way, whether that isn’t the very post itself… Well, yes, it might be: there are marks and scratches on it – but one can’t be sure. Anyhow, it was just like that post you have there. My father got to know that both of us had had a fright in the arbour, and he went down there himself one evening after dinner, and the arbour was pulled down at very short notice. I recollect hearing my father talking about it to an old man who used to do odd jobs in the place, and the old man saying, “Don’t you fear for that, sir: he’s fast enough in there without no one don’t take and let him out.” But when I asked who it was, I could get no satisfactory answer. Possibly my father or mother might have told me more about it when I grew up, but, as you know, they both died when we were still quite children. I must say it has always seemed very odd to me, and I’ve often asked the older people in the village whether they knew of anything strange, but either they knew nothing or they wouldn’t tell me. Dear, dear, how I have been boring you with my childish remembrances! but indeed that arbour did absorb our thoughts quite remarkably for a time. You can fancy, can’t you, the kind of stories that we made up for ourselves. Well, dear Mrs Anstruther, I must be leaving you now. We shall meet in town this winter, I hope, shan’t we?’ etc., etc.

The seats and the post were cleared away and uprooted respectively by that evening (скамейки были убраны, а столб выкорчеван к этому вечеру; respectively – в указанном порядке; соответственно[19]). Late summer weather is proverbially treacherous (изменчивость погоды позднего лета вошла в пословицу; proverbially – по пословице; proverb – пословица; treacherous – изменнический, предательский, ненадежный), and during dinner-time Mrs Collins sent up to ask for a little brandy (и во время обеда миссис Коллинз попросила принести: «послала попросить» немного бренди), because her husband had took a nasty chill (потому что ее муж сильно простудился; nasty – отвратительный; неприятный, плохой; опасный; chill – простуда; to take a chill – простудиться) and she was afraid he would not be able to do much next day (и она боялась, что от него немного будет толку: «что он не будет в состоянии сделать много» на следующий день).