Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

1245 страница из 1457

“Will you please let me talk to Mr. Corcoran?” Hallie was silent. “Mrs. Bushmill and my daughter and Mr. Nosby are going to take a trip through Italy as far as Sicily, where Mr. Nosby has some business, and they want you—that is, Hallie and her mother think they would get more out of it if you went along. Understand—it isn’t going to be any royal fandango this time. You’ll get your salary and your expenses and that’s all you’ll get. Do you want to go?”

“No, thanks, Mr. Bushmill,” said Corcoran quietly. “I’m going back to Paris at noon.”

“You’re not!” cried Hallie indignantly. “Why—why how am I going to know which is the Forum and the—the Acropolis and all that?” She rose from her father’s knee. “Look here, Daddy, I can persuade him.” Before they guessed her intentions she had seized Corcoran’s arm, dragged him into the hall and closed the door behind her.

“You’ve got to come,” she said intensely. “Don’t you understand? I’ve seen Claude in a new light and I can’t marry him and I don’t dare tell Father, and I’ll go mad if we have to go off with him alone.”