Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“How fascinating!” said Aunt Jo, looking searchingly at their guest for some signs of the scholarly recluse. “Have you been living near here for some time?”

“Not so long,” he answered with a leer. “But I’m stuck on it, see? I’ll maybe stay here till I rot.”

“Are you—do you live far away?” Aunt Cal was wondering what price she could get for the house at a forced sale, and how she and her sister could ever bear to move.

“Just a mile down the line…. This is a pretty gal you got here,” he added, indicating their niece with his spoon.

“Why—yes.” The two ladies glanced uneasily at Fifi.

“Someday I’m going to pick her up and run away with her,” he added pleasantly.

Aunt Cal, with a heroic effort, switched the subject away from their niece. They discussed Mr. Hopkins’ shack in the woods. Mr. Hopkins liked it well enough, he confessed, except for the presence of minute animal life, a small fault in an otherwise excellent habitat.

After dinner Fifi and Mr. Hopkins went out to the porch, while her aunts sat side by side on the sofa turning over the pages of magazines and from time to time glancing at each other with stricken eyes. That a savage had a few minutes since been sitting at their dinner table, that he was now alone with their niece on the dark veranda—no such terrible adventure had ever been allotted to their prim, quiet lives before.