"You would, Nan, if you knew them. You can't imagine how fearful it is down there. A congregational minister's house in Washington. The snobbery and the mealymouthedness ... God, it's stinking... You see I never really lived with them. My mother's sister brought me up mostly here in Boston. You see I had three brothers and a sister, and I was the ugly duckling; and my aunt, who was an old maid, took me off their hands. She was a fine woman. She died the year I went to college. She lived on an annuity, and left me just enough money to skimp through on till Junior year, when my father said he'd help... I have nothing in common with those people down there, and now, because they were giving me money, they decided I must do what they wanted, and they hate me and I hate them. I was a filthy coward to ever take a cent from him, anyway.... And so here I am at twenty-three, penniless, ignorant, and full of the genteel paralysis of culture... Silly, isn't it, Nan?" The rising wind whined through the rigging of the fishing schooners and the waves slapped noisily against their pitchy bows. Fanshaw's feet were numb and his forehead ached. "Let's walk along," he said. "I'm frozen. I'd like some hot chocolate, would you, Nan?" "But Wenny," Nan was saying, "You ought to stay on a little while to get your breath as it were... You took your room in Conant for the whole season." "But, how am I going to pay the term bill, I'd like to know?" There was a little tremor in Wenny's voice that made him cut off his words sharp. They turned and walked down the wharf again, the wind shoving and nudging at them from behind. In the lea of the buildings were a few old men with red faces sitting on boxes smoking pipes. "Still," said Wenny with a sudden laugh. "I'm glad it happened. It tears off this fearful cotton wadding I've been swaddled in all my life. We'll see what the world is like now, won't we Fanshaw, old duck?" He slapped Fanshaw hard between the shoulders. "The trouble is; can one live without it?" said Nan. Fearfully good looking the boy is, all excited and flushed like this, Fanshaw thought. "By God, I intend to!" "I thought you looked different, Wenny, when you got off the train," Nan said. "It was fearfully decent of you two to meet me... Makes me feel as if I had somebody, no matter what happened." "I've often thought," Fanshaw said, "That there was something that cut us three off together, like people in a carnival in Venice who might drift in their wonderfully carved state gondola down a dark canal ..." "And find themselves in the Charles ... Exactly!" cried Wenny laughing. They had left the wharves and were walking through the grey many-angled buildings of the business section. It was the lunch hour, and the streets were full of clerks and stenographers hustling from their offices to their lunch; from out of the tiled caves of lunchrooms came a smell of bacon and old coffee grounds.