Properties
- end_line
- 2787
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:16:18.880Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2740
- text
- 2623 all. Anyway, the one next to me dropped hers on the floor and I reached down and picked
2624 it up for her. I asked her if she was out collecting money for charity and all. She said no.
2625 She said she couldn't get it in her suitcase when she was packing it and she was just
2626 carrying it. She had a pretty nice smile when she looked at you. She had a big nose, and
2627 she had on those glasses with sort of iron rims that aren't too attractive, but she had a
2628 helluva kind face. "I thought if you were taking up a collection," I told her, "I could make
2629 a small contribution. You could keep the money for when you do take up a collection."
2630 "Oh, how very kind of you," she said, and the other one, her friend, looked over at
2631 me. The other one was reading a little black book while she drank her coffee. It looked
2632 like a Bible, but it was too skinny. It was a Bible-type book, though. All the two of them
2633 were eating for breakfast was toast and coffee. That depressed me. I hate it if I'm eating
2634 bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee.
2635 They let me give them ten bucks as a contribution. They kept asking me if I was
2636 sure I could afford it and all. I told them I had quite a bit of money with me, but they
2637 didn't seem to believe me. They took it, though, finally. The both of them kept thanking
2638 me so much it was embarrassing. I swung the conversation around to general topics and
2639 asked them where they were going. They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd
2640 just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent on
2641 168th Street or 186th Street or one of those streets way the hell uptown. The one next to
2642 me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and
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2643 American government. Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next
2644 to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain
2645 books for English. Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with
2646 lovers and all in them. Take old Eustacia Vye, in The Return of the Native by Thomas
2647 Hardy. She wasn't too sexy or anything, but even so you can't help wondering what a nun
2648 maybe thinks about when she reads about old Eustacia. I didn't say anything, though,
2649 naturally. All I said was English was my best subject.
2650 "Oh, really? Oh, I'm so glad!" the one with the glasses, that taught English, said.
2651 "What have you read this year? I'd be very interested to know." She was really nice.
2652 "Well, most of the time we were on the Anglo-Saxons. Beowulf, and old Grendel,
2653 and Lord Randal My Son, and all those things. But we had to read outside books for extra
2654 credit once in a while. I read The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and Romeo and
2655 Juliet and Julius--"
2656 "Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn't you just love it?" She certainly didn't
2657 sound much like a nun.
2658 "Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. There were a few things I didn't like about it, but it was
2659 quite moving, on the whole."
2660 "What didn't you like about it? Can you remember?" To tell you the truth, it was
2661 sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that
2662 play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I
2663 discussed it with her for a while. "Well, I'm not too crazy about Romeo and Juliet," I said.
2664 "I mean I like them, but--I don't know. They get pretty annoying sometimes. I mean I felt
2665 much sorrier when old Mercutio got killed than when Romeo and Juliet did. The think is,
2666 I never liked Romeo too much after Mercutio gets stabbed by that other man--Juliet's
2667 cousin--what's his name?"
2668 "Tybalt."
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