l, for dimensions were now so
metropolitan that intellectual leaders and literary authorities loomed
in outlying regions unfamiliar to the Ambersons. However, all "old
citizens" recognizable as gentry received cards, and of course so did
their dancing descendants.

The orchestra and the caterer were brought from away, in the Amberson
manner, though this was really a gesture--perhaps one more of habit
than of ostentation--for servitors of gaiety as proficient as these
importations were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and
plants and roped vines were brought from afar--not, however, until
the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate the
interior structure of the big house, in the Amberson way. It was
the last of the great, long remembered dances that "everybody talked
about"--there were getting to be so many people in town that no later
than the next year there were too many for "everybody" to hear of even
such a ball as the Ambersons'.

George, white-gloved, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, stood with his
mother and the Major, embowered in the big red and gold drawing room
downstairs, to "receive" the guests; and, standing thus together, the
trio offered a picturesque example of good looks persistent through
three generations. The Major, his daughter, and his grandson were of a
type all Amberson: tall, straight, and regular, with dark eyes, short
noses, good chins; and the grandfather's expression, no less than
the grandson's, was one of faintly amused condescension. There was a
difference, however. The grandson's unlined young face had nothing to
offer except this condescension; the grandfather's had other things to
say. It was a handsome, worldly old face, conscious of its importance,
but persuasive rather than arrogant, and not without tokens of
sufferings withstood. The Major's short white hair was parted in the
middle, like his grandson's, and in all he stood as briskly equipped to
the fashion as exquisite young George.

Isabel, standing between her father and her son caused a vague amazement
in the mind of the latter. Her age, just under forty, was for George
a thought of something as remote as the moons of Jupiter: he could not
possibly have conceived such an age ever coming to be his own: five
years was the limit of his thinking in time. Five years ago he had been
a child not yet fourteen; and those five years were an abyss. Five years
hence he would be almost twenty-four;