"Hell to pay.... Fight in the Armory, see? I doan know what it was about.... I was lookin' at two fellows fightin' an' a guy, a big tall guy, comes up to me, an' says, Well, what about it? Then he called me a sonofabitch.... I guess he was a Catholic, one of them South Boston guys. I hit 'im in the jaw, see? An' then I saw the bulls comin' an' I beat it. You don't care if I walk between yez, just to the corner?"
"Of course not," said Wenny.
At the first corner the man left them.
"I'll run along to home and mother now," he said.
"Wasn't that rich," cried Wenny laughing. "Say suppose we go back to see what's happening."
"The policemen would probably arrest us as accessories. You don't believe that man's story, do you? Probably a burglar making off."
"You are an old sourbelly this evening. What's the matter?" Wenny hopped and skipped along beside him roaring with laughter.
"I am rather depressed. Music depresses me."
They had reached the long brightly lighted oblong of Central Square where the fog was thinned by the shine of the plateglass windows of cheap furniture stores and the twisted glint of tinware in the window of Woolworth's. Young men loafed on the edge of the sidewalk and stumpy girls chattered in the doorways of candy shops.
"Where were you born, Fanshaw? I can't seem to remember?"