Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I had an awful time getting a job after that. Finally I got a statement out of the bank that contradicted the wildest of the stories that had started, but the people who were still interested said it was just because the bank didn’t want any fuss or scandal—and the rest had forgotten: that is they’d forgotten what had happened, but they remembered that somehow I just wasn’t a young fellow to be trusted——”

Hemmick paused and laughed again, still without enjoyment, but bitterly, uncomprehendingly, and with a profound helplessness.

“So, you see, that’s why I didn’t go to Cincinnati,” he said slowly; “my mother was alive then, and this was a pretty bad blow to her. She had an idea—one of those old-fashioned Southern ideas that stick in people’s heads down here—that somehow I ought to stay here in town and prove myself honest. She had it on her mind, and she wouldn’t hear of my going. She said that the day I went’d be day she’d die. So I sort of had to stay till I’d got back my—my reputation.”