Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“But not in my mouth, Mother,” he protested humorously.

The princess looked at him impatiently.

“I’m angry,” she said. “Why must you be so late tonight? We’re dining on a yacht and you were to have come along too.”

“What yacht?”

“Americans.” There was always a faint irony in her voice when she mentioned the land of her nativity. Her America was the Chicago of the nineties which she still thought of as the vast upstairs to a butcher shop. Even the irregularities of Prince Paul were not too high a price to have paid for her escape.

“Two yachts,” she continued; “in fact we don’t know which one. The note was very indefinite. Very careless indeed.”

Americans. Val’s mother had taught him to look down on Americans, but she hadn’t succeeded in making him dislike them. American men noticed you, even if you were seventeen. He liked Americans. Although he was thoroughly Russian he wasn’t immaculately so—the exact proportion, like that of a celebrated soap, was about ninety-nine and three-quarters per cent.