Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

2 страница из 86

Mabel Baker was in a semi-private room, which was as much as they could afford. There were three other women in the room, and their unreserved inquisitiveness and rude staring made Nicholas Baker self-conscious as he took his wife's hand and bent to kiss her cheek. Her face was gray and showed all its lines. "Was it bad?" he whispered. "Was it bad, dear?"

"Not too bad," she said. "It's hard to remember. It was like a nightmare you didn't think would ever end, and now it has ended."

"It's wonderful--a boy."

"He's very small, the doctor said."

"He'll grow bigger. He'll grow big enough for the Foreign Service."

"He'll grow up to be Ambassador to London," Mabel said, because that was the grandest thing she could imagine.

"Won't he have to make a million first?" Nicholas laughed. Mabel was positive, but had never convinced her husband, that only his lack of money prevented him from crossing the invisible line separating the career diplomats from the clerks, the gentlemen from the shabbily respectable, in the Department. He knew, although he never mentioned it, that there were barriers more inflexible than penury. There was family, and school, and the clothes he wore and the way he wore them, and the people he knew, and the wife he had married.