The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald Page B

want to ask you,” he began rather apologetically; “you Southerners put quite an emphasis on family, and all that—not that it isn’t quite all right, but you’ll find it a little different here. I mean— you’ll notice a lot of things that’ll seem to you sort of vulgar display at first, Sally Carrol; but just remember that this is a three-generation town. Everybody has a father, and about half of us have grandfathers. Back of that we don’t go.”
    “Of course,” she murmured.
    “Our grandfathers, you see, founded the place, and a lot of them had to take some pretty queer jobs while they were doing the founding. For instance, there’s one woman who at present is about the social model for the town; well, her father was the first public ash man— things like that.”
    “Why,” said Sally Carrol, puzzled, “did you s’pose I was goin’ to make remarks about people?”
    “Not at all,” interrupted Harry; “and I’m not apologizing for any one either. It’s just that—well, a Southern girl came up here last summer and said some unfortunate things, and—oh, I just thought I’d tell you.”
    Sally Carrol felt suddenly indignant—as though she had been unjustly spanked—but Harry evidently considered the subject closed, for he went on with a great surge of enthusiasm.
    “It’s carnival time, you know. First in ten years. And there’s an ice palace they’re building now that’s the first they’ve had since eightyfive. Built out of blocks of the clearest ice they could find—on a tremendous scale.”
    She rose and walking to the window pushed aside the heavy Turkish portières and looked out.
    “Oh!” she cried suddenly. “There’s two little boys makin’ a snow man! Harry, do you reckon I can go out an’ help ’em?”
    “You dream! Come here and kiss me.”
    She left the window rather reluctantly.
    “I don’t guess this is a very kissable climate, is it? I mean, it makes you so you don’t want to sit round, doesn’t it?”
    “We’re not going to. I’ve got a vacation for the first week you’re here, and there’s a dinner-dance to-night.”
    “Oh, Harry,” she confessed, subsiding in a heap, half in his lap, half in the pillows, “I sure do feel confused. I haven’t got an idea whether I’ll like it or not, an’ I don’t know what people expect, or anythin’. You’ll have to tell me, honey.”
    “I’ll tell you,” he said softly, “if you’ll just tell me you’re glad to be here.”
    “Glad—just awful glad!” she whispered, insinuating herself into his arms in her own peculiar way. “Where you are is home for me, Harry.”
    And as she said this she had the feeling for almost the first time in her life that she was acting a part.
    That night, amid the gleaming candles of a dinner-party, where the men seemed to do most of the talking while the girls sat in a haughty and expensive aloofness, even Harry’s presence on her left failed to make her feel at home.
    “They’re a good-looking crowd, don’t you think?” he demanded. “Just look round. There’s Spud Hubbard, tackle at Princeton last year, and Junie Morton—he and the red-haired fellow next to him were both Yale hockey captains; Junie was in my class. Why, the best athletes in the world come from these States round here. This is a man’s country, I tell you. Look at John J. Fishburn!”
    “Who’s he?” asked Sally Carrol innocently.
    “Don’t you know?”
    “I’ve heard the name.”
    “Greatest wheat man in the Northwest, and one of the greatest financiers in the country.”
    She turned suddenly to a voice on her right.
    “I guess they forgot to introduce us. My name’s Roger Patton.”
    “My name is Sally Carrol Happer,” she said graciously.
    “Yes, I know. Harry told me you were coming.”
    “You a relative?”
    “No, I’m a professor.”
    “Oh,” she laughed.
    “At the university. You’re from the South, aren’t you?”
    “Yes; Tarleton, Georgia.”
    She liked him