Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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In the South an engaged girl, even a young married woman, expected the same amount of half-affectionate badinage and flattery that would be accorded a débutante, but here all that seemed banned. One young man, after getting well started on the subject of Sally Carrol’s eyes, and how they had allured him ever since she entered the room, went into a violent confusion when he found she was visiting the Bellamys—was Harry’s fiancée. He seemed to feel as though he had made some risqué and inexcusable blunder, became immediately formal, and left her at the first opportunity.

She was rather glad when Roger Patton cut in on her and suggested that they sit out a while.

“Well,” he inquired, blinking cheerily, “how’s Carmen from the South?”

“Mighty fine. How’s—how’s Dangerous Dan McGrew? Sorry, but he’s the only Northerner I know much about.”

He seemed to enjoy that.

“Of course,” he confessed, “as a professor of literature I’m not supposed to have read Dangerous Dan McGrew.”

“Are you a native?”

“No, I’m a Philadelphian. Imported from Harvard to teach French. But I’ve been here ten years.”