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 barked. "Just
slidin' around! Call that dancin'? Rather see a jig any day in the
world! They ain't very modest, some of 'em. I don't mind that,
though. Not me!"

Miss Fanny Minafer was no longer in charge of him: he emerged from the
ballroom escorted by a middle-aged man of commonplace appearance. The
escort had a dry, lined face upon which, not ornamentally but as a
matter of course, there grew a business man's short moustache; and his
thin neck showed an Adam's apple, but not conspicuously, for there was