Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“George Harland—a red-headed boy?” he asked wonderingly.

She nodded.

“We were engaged for years. Sometimes I thought we’d never marry. Twice I postponed it, but it was getting late to just be a girl—I was twenty-five, and so finally we did. After that I was in love with him for over a year.”

When the sunset fell together in a jumbled heap of color in the bottom of the sky, they strolled back along the quiet road, still hand in hand.

“Will you come to dinner? I want you to see the children. My oldest boy is just fifteen.”

She lived in a plain frame house two doors from the garage, where two little girls were playing around a battered and ancient but occupied baby carriage in the yard.

“Mother! Oh Mother!” they cried.

Small brown arms swirled around her neck as she knelt beside them on the walk.

“Sister says Anna didn’t come, so we can’t have any dinner.”

“Mother’ll cook dinner. What’s the matter with Anna?”

“Anna’s father’s sick. She couldn’t come.”

A tall, tired man of fifty, who was reading a paper on the porch, rose and slipped a coat over his suspenders as they mounted the steps.