Читать книгу The Reign of Gilt онлайн

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Our family have a small house at a fashionable place in North Carolina; the mother and eldest son go there for a part of February and March. They have a thousand acres and a comfortable house in the Adirondacks—the head of the family likes to shoot and fish. They have a place in the Berkshire Hills—but they do not go there now and they are thinking of selling it. The wife has an apartment in Paris. She must be sure of comfort when she goes over for her shopping. Every few years they take a big house in Mayfair for the season, and go on to Scotland for the shooting. Then there is the steam yacht, an ocean greyhound—last year it cost them sixty thousand dollars for maintenance, a few repairs and refittings. The grown son has persuaded his father to start a racing stable—a small one with fifteen or twenty thoroughbreds. His trainer costs him ten thousand dollars a year, and his jockey five thousand more, as a retaining fee. The father estimates the cost of this addition to the family expense at one hundred thousand dollars a year—he hopes this will include betting losses. The son has long had a string of polo ponies that costs, with all its embroideries, fifteen to twenty thousand a year.