Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I better introduce who I am, maybe,” said the visitor. “My name’s Powell. I’m a resident of Tarleton, Georgia. This here nigger’s my boy Hugo.”

“Your son!” The girl stared from one to the other in wild fascination.

“No, he’s my body-servant, I guess you’d call it. We call a nigger a boy down yonder.”

At this reference to the finer customs of his native soil the boy Hugo put his hands behind his back and looked darkly and superciliously down the lawn.

“Yas’m,” he muttered, “I’m a body-servant.”

“Where you going in your automobile,” demanded Amanthis.

“Goin’ north for the summer.”

“Where to?”

The tourist waved his hand with a careless gesture as if to indicate the Adirondacks, the Thousand Islands, Newport—but he said:

“We’re tryin’ New York.”

“Have you ever been there before?”

“Never have. But I been to Atlanta lots of times. An’ we passed through all kinds of cities this trip. Man!”

He whistled to express the enormous spectacularity of his recent travels.

“Listen,” said Amanthis intently, “you better have something to eat. Tell your—your body-servant to go round in back and ask the cook to send us out some sandwiches and lemonade. Or maybe you don’t drink lemonade—very few people do anymore.”