e that when a woman's past thirty-five the prettier her hair is,
the more certain you are to meet somebody with reliable information that
it's a wig. You can be sure that for many years there's been more gossip
in this place about the Ambersons than about any other family. I dare
say it isn't so much so now as it used to be, because the town got too
big long ago, but it's the truth that the more prominent you are the
more gossip there is about you, and the more people would like to pull
you down. Well, they can't do it as long as you refuse to know what
gossip there is about you. But the minute you notice it, it's got you!
I'm not speaking of certain kinds of slander that sometimes people have
got to take to the courts; I'm talking of the wretched buzzing the
Mrs. John-sons do--the thing you seem to have such a horror of--people
'talking'--the kind of thing that has assailed your mother. People who
have repeated a slander either get ashamed or forget it, if they're
let alone. Challenge them, and in self-defense they believe everything
they've said: they'd rather believe you a sinner than believe themselves
liars, naturally. Submit to gossip and you kill it; fight it and you
make it strong. People will forget almost any slander except one that's
been fought."

"Is that all?" George asked.

"I suppose so," his uncle murmured sadly.

"Well, then, may I ask what you'd have done, in my place?"

"I'm not sure, Georgie. When I was your age I was like you in many ways,
especially in not being very cool-headed, so I can't say. Youth can't be
trusted for much, except asserting itself and fighting and making love."

"Indeed!" George snorted. "May I ask what you think I ought to have
done?"

"Nothing."

"'Nothing?" George echoed, mocking bitterly "I suppose you think I mean
to let my mother's good name--"

"Your mother's good name!" Amberson cut him off impatiently. "Nobody
has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth,
either. Well, your mother's name was in some silly mouths, and all
you've done was to go and have a scene with the worst old woman gossip
in the town--a scene that's going to make her into a partisan against
your mother, whereas she was a mere prattler before. Don't you suppose
she'll be all over town with this to-morrow? To-morrow? Why, she'll
have her telephone going to-night as long as any of her friends are up!
People that never heard anything about this are going to hear it al