"Why?"
"I was thinking up where people I knew were born. Nan was born in Boston, Beacon Hill.... Central Square would be a comical place to be born."
"You knew perfectly well I was born in Omaha. You just want the satisfaction of hearing me say it."
Scraps of talk kept impinging upon them as they threaded through the groups on the sidewalk.
"I only lived there until I was twelve," Fanshaw was saying. In his ears rang the phrase: An' I gave her one swell time. "Then my father died and Mother moved East. She'd always wanted to live in Boston. The day we were settled in our little house in Brookline she brought me in on the car to see the Abbey paintings. She was bound I'd take to the arts."
"By the way, how is your mother now?"
"About the same, Wenny. Poor lamb, I'm afraid she never will get much better. She's so patient about it."
They were out of the square walking past dwelling houses set back from the road. A smell of leaves and autumnal earth came to them. In Fanshaw's mind was the picture of a grey head against a pillow, heavy despairing wrinkles from the nose to the ends of the mouth where was a wry peevish twitch of pain; his mother shapeless in a lilac dressing gown propped up in the easy chair in the library amid a faint stale smell of cologne and medicines.
"I wonder if it will always be like this, this meaningless round of things. It would have been if I hadn't met you, Wenny."
"D'you mean I'm a horrible example to keep you on the straight paths of virtue?" said Wenny harshly. He shook off Fanshaw's hand that was on his arm and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.