Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Get house—tha’s start. Then you get know people. Snobbish town first toward outsider, but not long—not after know you. People like you”—he indicated Ahearn and his wife with a sweeping gesture—“all right. Cordial as an’thin’ once get by first barrer-bar-barrer—” He swallowed, and then said “barrier,” repeated it masterfully.

Evylyn looked appealingly at her brother-in-law, but before he could intercede a thick mumble had come crowding out of Tom Lowrie, hindered by the dead cigar which he gripped firmly with his teeth.

“Huma uma ho huma ahdy um——”

“What?” demanded Harold earnestly.

Resignedly and with difficulty Tom removed the cigar—that is, he removed part of it, and then blew the remainder with a whut sound across the room, where it landed liquidly and limply in Mrs. Ahearn’s lap.

“Beg pardon,” he mumbled, and rose with the vague intention of going after it. Milton’s hand on his coat collapsed him in time, and Mrs. Ahearn not ungracefully flounced the tobacco from her skirt to the floor, never once looking at it.