rather than doing. He could
not appeal to one of its members now to help him to a job. Besides, they
were not precisely the warmest-hearted crew in the world, and he had
long ago dropped the last affectation of a correspondence with any of
them. He was as aloof from any survival of intimacy with his boyhood
friends in the city, and, in truth, had lost track of most of them. "The
Friends of the Ace," once bound by oath to succour one another in peril
or poverty, were long ago dispersed; one or two had died; one or two
had gone to live elsewhere; the others were disappeared into the smoky
bigness of the heavy city. Of the brethren, there remained within
his present cognizance only his old enemy, the red-haired Kinney, now
married to Janie Sharon, and Charlie Johnson, who, out of deference
to his mother's memory, had passed the Amberson Mansion one day, when
George stood upon the front steps, and, looking in fiercely, had looked
away with continued fierceness--his only token of recognition.

On this last homeward walk of his, when George reached the entrance
to Amberson Addition--that is, when he came to where the entrance had
formerly been--he gave a little start, and halted for a moment to stare.
This was the first time he had noticed that the stone pillars, marking
the entrance, had been removed. Then he realized that for a long time he
had been conscious of a queerness about this corner without being aware
of what made the difference. National Avenue met Amberson Boulevard here
at an obtuse angle, and the removal of the pillars made the Boulevard
seem a cross-street of no overpowering importance--certainly it did not
seem to be a boulevard!

At the next corner Neptune's Fountain remained, and one could still
determine with accuracy what its designer's intentions had been. It
stood in sore need of just one last kindness; and if the thing had
possessed any friends they would have done that doleful shovelling after
dark.

George did not let his eyes linger upon the relic; nor did he look
steadfastly at the Amberson Mansion. Massive as the old house was, it
managed to look gaunt: its windows stared with the skull emptiness of
all windows in empty houses that are to be lived in no more. Of course
the rowdy boys of the neighbourhood had been at work: many of these
haggard windows were broken; the front door stood ajar, forced open; and
idiot salacity, in white chalk, was smeared everywhere upon the pillars
and stonework