Amberson--Mr. Minafer, I mean."

"What must be wonderful?"

"To be so important as that!"

"That isn't 'important," George assured her. "Anybody that really is
anybody ought to be able to do about as they like in their own town, I
should think!"

She looked at him critically from under her shading lashes--but her
eyes grew gentler almost at once. In truth, they became more
appreciative than critical. George's imperious good looks were
altogether manly, yet approached actual beauty as closely as a boy's
good looks should dare; and dance-music and flowers have some effect
upon nineteen-year-old girls as well as upon eighteen-year-old boys.
Miss Morgan turned her eyes slowly from George, and pressed her face
among the lilies-of-the-valley and violets of the pretty bouquet she
carried, while, from the gallery above, the music of the next dance
carolled out merrily in a new two-step. The musicians made the melody
gay for the Christmastime with chimes of sleighbells, and the entrance
to the shadowed stairway framed the passing flushed and lively
dancers, but neither George nor Miss Morgan suggested moving to join
the dance.

The stairway was draughty: the steps were narrow and uncomfortable; no
older person would have remained in such a place. Moreover, these two
young people were strangers to each other; neither had said anything
in which the other had discovered the slightest intrinsic interest;
there had not arisen between them the beginnings of congeniality, or