s got to think o' funerals when I smell so
many flowers!" And, as the pressure of people forced Fanny and himself
against the white marble mantelpiece, he pursued this train of cheery
thought, shouting, "Right here's where the Major's wife was laid out at
her funeral. They had her in a good light from that big bow window."
He paused to chuckle mournfully. "I s'pose that's where they'll put the
Major when his time comes."

Presently George's mortification was increased to hear this sawmill
droning harshly from the midst of the thickening crowd: "Ain't the
dancin' broke out yet, Fanny? Hoopla! Le's push through and go see the
young women-folks crack their heels! Start the circus! Hoopse-daisy!"
Miss Fanny Minafer, in charge of the lively veteran, was almost as
distressed as her nephew George, but she did her duty and managed to get
old John through the press and out to the broad stairway, which numbers
of young people were now ascending to the ballroom. And here the sawmill
voice still rose over all others: "Solid black walnut every inch of it,
balustrades and all. Sixty thousand dollars' worth o' carved woodwork
in the house! Like water! Spent money like water! Always did! Still do!
Like water! God knows where it all comes from!"

He continued the ascent, barking and coughing among the gleaming young
heads, white shoulders, jewels, and chiffon, like an old dog slowly
swimming up the rapids of a sparkling river; while down below, in the
drawing room, George began to recover from the degradation into which
this relic of early settler days had dragged him. What restored him
completely was a dark-eyed little beauty of nineteen, very knowing in
lustrous blue and jet; at sight of this dashing advent in the line of
guests before him, George was fully an Amberson again.

"Remember you very well indeed!" he said, his graciousness more earnest
than any he had heretofore displayed. Isabel heard him and laughed.

"But you don't, George!" she said. "You don't remember her yet, though
of course you will! Miss Morgan is from out of town, and I'm afraid this
is the first time you've ever seen her. You might take her up to the
dancing; I think you've pretty well done your duty here."

"Be d'lighted," George responded formally, and offered his arm, not with
a flourish, certainly, but with an impressiveness inspired partly by the
appearance of the person to whom he offered it, partly by his being the
hero of this fete, and partly by hi