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at home. He had come from the Baltic to the Thames, but it might just
as well have been from any place to any other place. As he stood
there, straddling at ease, a thick figure of a man but not slow and
heavy, with his gleaming bald front and giant moustache, looking
down at the wharf quite incuriously, he seemed a man who was
neither coming home nor leaving it, and yet not a simple traveller,
and this gave him a faint piratical air.

***

1
(By L. M. Alcot )

Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty,
being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a
sweet mouth and white hands of which she was rather vain. Fifteen
years old Jo was very tall, thin and brown, and reminded one of a
colt, for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs,
which were very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, a
comical nose and sharp grey eyes, which appeared to see everything,
and were in turns fierce, funny or thoughtful.
Her long thick hair was her only beauty, but it was usually
bundled into a net to be out of her way. Round shoulders had Jo, big
hands and feet, a fly-away look to her clothes, and the uncomfortable
appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting into a woman and
didn’t like it.
Elizabeth – or Berth, as everyone called her was a rosy,
smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a timid
voice, and a peaceful expression, which was seldom disturbed. Her
father called her “Little Tranquillity”, and the name suited her
excellently, for she seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only
venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved.
Amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her
own opinion at least. A regular snow maiden, with blue eyes, and
yellow hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender and always
carrying herself like a lady mindful of her manners.

***

1
Текст друкується за виданням Сафонова М.П. Пособие по разговорному
английскому языку. – М: Высшая школа. 1977. С. 23-24.

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