Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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The carefully kept private ledgers made Jeff realize how little he really knew about his father. Nicholas Baker had always seemed a man untouched by personal worries, but always ready to brood about the Manchuria affair, or the Bulgarian cabinet, or the war in Spain, or almost any Central American revolution. Yet in these ledgers he found proof that his father endured many financial indignities. There were Morris Plan loans, and furniture loans, and automobile loans, and the two years to pay for the refrigerator, and the dunning letters from grocers and department stores and the doctors and the Medical Credit Association, and even the undertaker. Sometimes the letters concluded: "If this account is not settled at once it will be brought to the attention of your employers." Always after that, payment was quick. In 1926 there was a bequest of $2500 from a cousin--that would account for the building lots in Florida. Once there was a notation--"Fifteenth wedding anniversary. Tickets to National Theater $6.60." It was the only one of its kind.