The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington Page A

exclaimed. "What a big word when we only met last night!"
    "That's another case of it," he said, with obvious sincerity. "One of the reasons I don't like you--much!--is you've got that way of seeming quietly superior to everybody else."
    "I!" she cried. "I have?"
    "Oh, you think you keep it sort of confidential to yourself, but it's plain enough! I don't believe in that kind of thing."
    "You don't?"
    "No," said George emphatically. "Not with me! I think the world's like this: there's a few people that their birth and position, and so on, puts them at the top, and they ought to treat each other entirely as equals." His voice betrayed a little emotion as he added, "I wouldn't speak like this to everybody."
    "You mean you're confiding your deepest creed--or code, whatever it is--to me?"
    "Go on, make fun of it, then!" George said bitterly. "You do think you're terribly clever! It makes me tired!"
    "Well, as you don't like my seeming 'quietly superior,' after this I'll be noisily superior," she returned cheerfully. "We aim to please!"
    "I had a notion before I came for you today that we were going to quarrel," he said.
    "No, we won't; it takes two!" She laughed and waved her muff toward a new house, not quite completed, standing in a field upon their right. They had passed beyond Amberson Addition, and were leaving the northern fringes of the town for the open country. "Isn't that a beautiful house!" she exclaimed. "Papa and I call it our Beautiful House."
    George was not pleased. "Does it belong to you?"
    "Of course not! Papa brought me out here the other day, driving in his machine, and we both loved it. It's so spacious and dignified and plain."
    "Yes, it's plain enough!" George grunted.
    "Yet it's lovely; the gray-green roof and shutters give just enough colour, with the trees, for the long white walls. It seems to me the finest house I've seen in this part of the country."
    George was outraged by an enthusiasm so ignorant--not ten minutes ago they had passed the Amberson Mansion. "Is that a sample of your taste in architecture?" he asked.
    "Yes. Why?"
    "Because it strikes me you better go somewhere and study the subject a little!"
    Lucy looked puzzled. "What makes you have so much feeling about it? Have I offended you?"
    "Offended' nothing!" George returned brusquely. "Girls usually think they know it all as soon as they've learned to dance and dress and flirt a little. They never know anything about things like architecture, for instance. That house is about as bum a house as any house I ever saw!"
    "Why?"
    "Why?" George repeated. "Did you ask me why?"
    "Yes."
    "Well, for one thing--" he paused--"for one thing--well, just look at it! I shouldn't think you'd have to do any more than look at it if you'd ever given any attention to architecture."
    "What is the matter with its architecture, Mr. Minafer?"
    "Well, it's this way," said George. "It's like this. Well, for instance, that house--well, it was built like a town house." He spoke of it in the past tense, because they had now left it far behind them --a human habit of curious significance. "It was like a house meant for a street in the city. What kind of a house was that for people of any taste to build out here in the country?"
    "But papa says it's built that way on purpose. There are a lot of other houses being built in this direction, and papa says the city's coming out this way; and in a year or two that house will be right in town."
    "It was a bum house, anyhow," said George crossly. "I don't even know the people that are building it. They say a lot of riffraff come to town every year nowadays and there's other riffraff that have always lived here, and have made a little money, and act as if they owned the place. Uncle Sydney was talking about it yesterday: he says he and some of his friends are organizing a country club, and already some of these riffraff are worming into it--people he never heard of at all! Anyhow, I guess it's pretty clear you don't know a great