as his informant,
"an' you kin heah all you a-mind to wivout goin' on up no fudda. Mist'
Sydney an' Mist' Jawge talkin' louduh'n I evuh heah nobody ca'y on in
nish heah house! Quollin', honey, big quollin'!"

"All right," said George shortly. "You go on back to your own part of
the house, and don't make any talk. Hear me?"

"Yessuh, yessuh," Sam chuckled, as he shuffled away. "Plenty talkin'
wivout Sam! Yessuh!"

George went to the foot of the great stairway. He could hear angry
voices overhead--those of his two uncles--and a plaintive murmur, as if
the Major tried to keep the peace. Such sounds were far from encouraging
to callers, and George decided not to go upstairs until this interview
was over. His decision was the result of no timidity, nor of a too
sensitive delicacy. What he felt was, that if he interrupted the scene
in his grandfather's room, just at this time, one of the three gentlemen
engaging in it might speak to him in a peremptory manner (in the heat
of the moment) and George saw no reason for exposing his dignity to such
mischances. Therefore he turned from the stairway, and going quietly
into the library, picked up a magazine--but he did not open it, for his
attention was instantly arrested by his Aunt Amelia's voice, speaking in
the next room. The door was open and George heard her distinctly.

"Isabel does? Isabel!" she exclaimed, her tone high and shrewish. "You
needn't tell me anything about Isabel Minafer, I guess, my dear old
Frank Bronson! I know her a little better than you do, don't you think?"

George heard the voice of Mr. Bronson replying--a voice familiar to him
as that of his grandfather's attorney-in-chief and chief intimate as
well. He was a contemporary of the Major's, being over seventy, and they
had been through three years of the War in the same regiment. Amelia
addressed him now, with an effect of angry mockery, as "my dear old
Frank Bronson"; but that (without the mockery) was how the Amberson
family almost always spoke of him: "dear old Frank Bronson." He was a
hale, thin old man, six feet three inches tall, and without a stoop.

"I doubt your knowing Isabel," he said stiffly. "You speak of her as you
do because she sides with her brother George, instead of with you and
Sydney."

"Pooh!" Aunt Amelia was evidently in a passion. "You know what's been
going on over there, well enough, Frank Bronson!"

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Oh, you don't? You don'