le) were
unable to content themselves with the view that had so charmed Mrs.
Henry Franklin Foster: they spent their time struggling to keep Miss
Amberson's face turned toward them. She turned it most often, observers
said, toward two: one excelling in the general struggle by his sparkle,
and the other by that winning if not winsome old trait, persistence. The
sparkling gentleman "led germans" with her, and sent sonnets to her with
his bouquets--sonnets lacking neither music nor wit. He was generous,
poor, well-dressed, and his amazing persuasiveness was one reason why
he was always in debt. No one doubted that he would be able to persuade
Isabel, but he unfortunately joined too merry a party one night, and,
during a moonlight serenade upon the lawn before the Amberson Mansion,
was easily identified from the windows as the person who stepped through
the bass viol and had to be assisted to a waiting carriage. One of Miss
Amberson's brothers was among the serenaders, and, when the party
had dispersed, remained propped against the front door in a state
of helpless liveliness; the Major going down in a dressing-gown and
slippers to bring him in, and scolding mildly, while imperfectly
concealing strong impulses to laughter. Miss Amberson also laughed
at this brother, the next day, but for the suitor it was a different
matter: she refused to see him when he called to apologize. "You seem to
care a great deal about bass viols!" he wrote her. "I promise never
to break another." She made no response to the note, unless it was an
answer, two weeks later, when her engagement was announced. She took the
persistent one, Wilbur Minafer, no breaker of bass viols or of hearts,
no serenader at all.

A few people, who always foresaw everything, claimed that they were not
surprised, because though Wilbur Minafer "might not be an Apollo, as it
were," he was "a steady young business man, and a good church-goer," and
Isabel Amberson was "pretty sensible--for such a showy girl." But the
engagement astounded the young people, and most of their fathers and
mothers, too; and as a topic it supplanted literature at the next
meeting of the "Women's Tennyson Club."

"Wilbur Minafer!" a member cried, her inflection seeming to imply that
Wilbur's crime was explained by his surname. "Wilbur Minafer! It's the
queerest thing I ever heard! To think of her taking Wilbur Minafer, just
because a man any woman would like a thousand times better was a little