room, and he was heard everywhere: "Always 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.