Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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In Brussels they were to remain five days. The first morning Corcoran took three seats in a touring bus, and they inspected the guild halls and the palaces and the monuments and the parks, while he corrected the guide’s historical slips in stage whispers and congratulated himself on doing so well.

But during the afternoon it drizzled as they drove through the streets and he grew tired of his own voice, of Hallie’s conventional “Oh, isn’t that interesting,” echoed by her mother, and he wondered if five days wasn’t too long to stay here after all. Still he had impressed them, without doubt; he had made a good start as the serious and well-informed young man. Moreover he had done well with the money. Resisting his first impulse to take a private limousine for the day, which would certainly have cost twelve dollars, he had only three bus tickets at one dollar each to enter in the little book. Before he began his nightly reading he put it down for Mr. Bushmill to see. But first of all he took a steaming hot bath—he had never ridden in a rubber-neck wagon with ordinary sightseers before and he found the idea rather painful.