“Indeed I should!”
They climbed the spiral stairs to the floor above, and Springer presented Quentin to his mother; a pleasant woman, thin, smiling, very active and vivacious.
They dined; after dinner, the three men lit their pipes, and Springer’s father spoke enthusiastically of his home town.
“My town is a great place,” he said to Quentin with a smile.
“What is it?”
“Zurich. Ah! If you could see it!...”
“But father, he has seen Paris and London.”
“Oh! That makes no difference. I’ve known many people from Paris and Vienna who were astounded when they saw Zurich.”
Springer’s father and mother, though they had been in Cordova for over thirty years, did not speak Spanish very well.
What a difference there was between that home, and the house where Quentin had lived with María Lucena and her mother! Here there was no talk of marquises, or counts, or actors, or toreadors, or ponies; their only subjects of conversation were work, improvements in industry, art, and music.