"Why?"

"Well, it's sort of a good thing in one way. For instance, my Uncle
Sydney Amberson and his wife, Aunt Amelia, they haven't got much of
anything to do with themselves--get bored to death around here, of
course. Well, probably Uncle George'll have Uncle Sydney appointed
minister or ambassador, or something like that, to Russia or Italy or
somewhere, and that'll make it pleasant when any of the rest of the
family go travelling, or things like that. I expect to do a good deal of
travelling myself when I get out of college."

On the stairway he pointed out this prospective ambassadorial couple,
Sydney and Amelia. They were coming down, fronting the ascending tide,
and as conspicuous over it as a king and queen in a play. Moreover,
as the clear-eyed Miss Morgan remarked, the very least they looked was
ambassadorial. Sydney was an Amberson exaggerated, more pompous than
gracious; too portly, flushed, starched to a shine, his stately
jowl furnished with an Edward the Seventh beard. Amelia, likewise
full-bodied, showed glittering blond hair exuberantly dressed; a pink,
fat face cold under a white-hot tiara; a solid, cold bosom under a
white-hot necklace; great, cold, gloved arms, and the rest of her
beautifully upholstered. Amelia was an Amberson born, herself, Sydney's
second-cousin: they had no children, and Sydney was without a business
or a profession; thus both found a great deal of time to think about the
appropriateness of their becoming Excellencies. And as George ascended
the broad stairway, they were precisely the aunt and uncle he was most
pleased to point out, to a girl from out of town, as his appurtenances
in the way of relatives. At sight of them the grandeur of the Amberson
family was instantly conspicuous as a permanent thing: it was impossible
to doubt that the Ambersons were entrenched, in their nobility and
riches, behind polished and glittering barriers which were as solid as
they were brilliant, and would last.

Chapter V

The hero of the fete, with the dark-eyed little beauty upon his arm,
reached the top of the second flight of stairs; and here, beyond a
spacious landing, where two proud-like darkies tended a crystalline
punch bowl, four wide archways in a rose-vine lattice framed gliding
silhouettes of waltzers, already smoothly at it to the castanets of
"La Paloma." Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act of
leaving these delights. "D'want 'ny more o' that!" he bark