"But Wenny," Nan was pleading, "I think you are probably exaggerating the importance of the whole thing. I don't see that it's necessary to get on your high horse like that."
"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.