"Mercedes Lackey - EM 1 - The Fire Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

which had saved her pride. Since another of her economies was to abjure eating out, she was not
forced to parade the slender state of their purses in public.
The Bergdorf was comfortably warm, lit softly with candles and a few well-placed gaslights. The
only sounds were those of conversation and the clink of silver on china. The Professor was one who
gave a gourmet meal all its due reverence, so they ate in silence. Rosalind was not loath to do so
either; the peculiar sour-savory tang of the sauerbraten awoke a hunger of intensity she had not
realized was possible, and although she seldom drank, she joined the Professor in a lady-sized
stein of the Bergdorf's excellent beer. The food vanished from her plate so quickly she might have
conjured it away, and the attentive blond-haired, blue-eyed waiter brought her a second serving
without being asked.
"Vielen dank," she said to him, surprising a smile from him. He winked at her, and hurried to
answer the summons from another table.
She devoured her second helping with a thoroughness that would have embarrassed her a month ago.


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Now her capacity for being embarrassed had been exhausted, and her pride flattened like a sheet of
vellum in a press.
The waiter returned at the Professor's signal, and cleared away the plates as the Professor
ordered Black Forest torte for both of them. Rosalind did not even make a token protest; it might
be a long time before she ever ate like this again. Her torte was long gone before the Professor
had finished his, and she settled back in her chair with a sigh of melancholy mixed with content.
I must think of some way to earn my way. She had a vague idea that she might take a position as a
governess somewhere, or even as a schoolteacher in some Western state. Any thought of achieving a
Ph.D. in the classics and medieval literature was out of the question now, of course. She only
hoped that she could convince someone that her unconventional education had made her fit to teach
the "Three Rs."
The waiter arrived to clean off the dessert plates, and with him came coffee. Professor Cathcart
settled back in his chair as she sugared and creamed hers liberally, cradling his cup in both
hands.
"You must forgive your old friend and teacher his bluntness, but how did you come to such a pass?"
he asked. "I had not thought your father to be the improvident sort."
She shook her head, bitterly. "You may lay the cause of our loss at Neville Tree's door," she
replied, with bitterness not even the savor of her dessert could remove from her mouth. The
Professor had the grace to blush, then, for it was he who had introduced that scion of prominent
politicians to the elder Hawkins.
He said nothing more, for indeed, there was no more to be said. For all of Neville Tree's
illustrious parentage, the man was no better than a common sharpster. He had come looking for
investors in his bank, and he got many, including Professor Hawkins; he then ran the bank into the
ground with his poor management-all the while drawing a princely salary-leaving investors and
depositors alike holding nothing but air and empty promises. Not content with that, he concocted
another scheme, with many promises that he would get the money back and more-he would go and find
oil and make them all rich. Throwing good money after bad, Professor Hawkins and others had fallen
for his plausible tale a second time, and once again found themselves with shares of useless stock
in a company that had drilled for oil where no geologist would ever anticipate finding any.
Presumably he had taken himself to another state with more schemes designed mainly to allow him to
draw a handsome wage at the expense of others.
Under the table, Rosalind's hand clenched on her napkin. When her father had told her of the loss