Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I’m letting you hold the purse strings because I think you’ve learned your lesson,” he said, “but just remember that this time the money isn’t your own. All that belongs to you is the seventy-five dollars a week that I pay you in salary. Every other expenditure is to be entered in that little book and shown to me.”

“I understand.”

“The first thing is to watch what you spend—and prove to me that you’ve got the common sense to profit by your mistake. The second and most important thing is that my wife and daughter are to have a good time.”

With the first of his salary Corcoran supplied himself with histories and guidebooks of Holland and Belgium, and on the night before their departure, as well as on the night of their arrival in Brussels, he sat up late absorbing a mass of information that he had never, in his travels with his mother, been aware of before. They had not gone in for sight-seeing. His mother had considered it something which only school-teachers and vulgar tourists did, but Mr. Bushmill had impressed upon him that Hallie was to have all the advantages of travel; he must make it interesting for her by keeping ahead of her every day.