Minafer, just because a man any woman would like a thousand times
better was a little wild one night at a serenade!"

"No," said Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster. "It isn't that. It isn't even
because she's afraid he'd be a dissipated husband and she wants to be
safe. It isn't because she's religious or hates wildness; it isn't
even because she hates wildness in him."

"Well, but look how she's thrown him over for it."

"No, that wasn't her reason," said the wise Mrs. Henry Franklin
Foster. "If men only knew it--and it's a good thing they don't--a
woman doesn't really care much about whether a man's wild or not, if
it doesn't affect herself, and Isabel Amberson doesn't care a thing!"

"Mrs. Foster!"

"No, she doesn't. What she minds is his making a clown of himself in
her front yard! It made her think he didn't care much about her.
She's probably mistaken, but that's what she thinks, and it's too late
for her to think anything else now, because she's going to be married
right away--the invitations will be out next week. It'll be a big
Amberson-style thing, raw oysters floating in scooped-out blocks of
ice and a band from out-of-town--champagne, showy presents; a colossal
present from the Major. Then Wilbur will take Isabel on the
carefulest little wedding trip he can manage, and she'll be a good
wife to him, but they'll have the worst spoiled lot of children this
town will ever see."

"How on earth do you make that out, Mrs. Foster?"