The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

another waltz when everybody else had gone downstairs and the fiddles were being put away in their cases. Papa danced part of it with Miss Minafer and the rest with your mother. Miss Minafer's your aunt, isn't she?"
    "Yes; she lives with us. I tease her a good deal."
    "What about?"
    "Oh, anything handy--whatever's easy to tease an old maid about."
    "Doesn't she mind?"
    "She usually has sort of a grouch on me," laughed George. "Nothing much. That's our house just beyond grandfather's." He waved a sealskin gaunt let to indicate the house Major Amberson had built for Isabel as a wedding gift. "It's almost the same as grandfather's, only not as large and hasn't got a regular ballroom. We gave the dance, last night, at grandfather's on account of the ballroom, and because I'm the only grandchild, you know. Of course, some day that'll be my house, though I expect my mother will most likely go on living where she does now, with father and Aunt Fanny. I suppose I'll probably build a country house, too--somewhere East, I guess." He stopped speaking, and frowned as they passed a closed carriage and pair. The body of this comfortable vehicle sagged slightly to one side; the paint was old and seamed with hundreds of minute cracks like little rivers on a black map; the coachman, a fat and elderly darky, seemed to drowse upon the box; but the open window afforded the occupants of the cutter a glimpse of a tired, fine old face, a silk hat, a pearl tie, and an astrachan collar, evidently out to take the air.
    "There's your grandfather now," said Lucy. "Isn't it?"
    George's frown was not relaxed. "Yes, it is; and he ought to give that rat-trap away and sell those old horses. They're a disgrace, all shaggy--not even clipped. I suppose he doesn't notice it--people get awful funny when they get old; they seem to lose their self-respect, sort of."
    "He seemed a real Brummell to me," she said.
    "Oh, he keeps up about what he wears, well enough, but--well, look at that!" He pointed to a statue of Minerva, one of the cast-iron sculptures Major Amberson had set up in opening the Addition years before. Minerva was intact, but a blackish streak descended unpleasantly from her forehead to the point of her straight nose, and a few other streaks were sketched in a repellent dinge upon the folds of her drapery.
    "That must be from soot," said Lucy. "There are so many houses around here."
    "Anyhow, somebody ought to see that these statues are kept clean. My grandfather owns a good many of these houses, I guess, for renting. Of course, he sold most of the lots--there aren't any vacant ones, and there used to be heaps of 'em when I was a boy. Another thing I don't think he ought to allow a good many of these people bought big lots and they built houses on 'em; then the price of the land kept getting higher, and they'd sell part of their yards and let the people that bought it build houses on it to live in, till they haven't hardly any of 'em got big, open yards any more, and it's getting all too much built up. The way it used to be, it was like a gentleman's country estate, and that's the way my grandfather ought to keep it. He lets these people take too many liberties: they do anything they want to."
    "But how could he stop them?" Lucy asked, surely with reason. "If he sold them the land, it's theirs, isn't it?"
    George remained serene in the face of this apparently difficult question. "He ought to have all the trades-people boycott the families that sell part of their yards that way. All he'd have to do would be to tell the trades-people they wouldn't get any more orders from the family if they didn't do it."
    "From 'the family'? What family?"
    "Our family," said George, unperturbed. "The Ambersons."
    "I see!" she murmured, and evidently she did see something that he did not, for, as she lifted her muff to her face, he asked:
    "What are you laughing at now?"
    "Why?"
    "You always seem to have some little secret of your own to get happy over!"
    "Always!" she