Minafer herself told
me that everything George and his mother have of their own--that is,
just to spend as they like--she says it has always come from Major
Amberson."

"Thrift, Horatio!" said Eugene lightly. "Thrift's an inheritance, and a
common enough one here. The people who settled the country had to save,
so making and saving were taught as virtues, and the people, to the
third generation, haven't found out that making and saving are only
means to an end. Minafer doesn't believe in money being spent. He
believes God made it to be invested and saved."

"But George isn't saving. He's reckless, and even if he is arrogant and
conceited and bad-tempered, he's awfully generous."

"Oh, he's an Amberson," said her father. "The Ambersons aren't saving.
They're too much the other way, most of them."

"I don't think I should have called George bad-tempered," Lucy said
thoughtfully. "No. I don't think he is."

"Only when he's cross about something?" Morgan suggested, with a
semblance of sympathetic gravity.

"Yes," she said brightly, not perceiving that his intention was
humorous. "All the rest of the time he's really very amiable. Of course,
he's much more a perfect child, the whole time, than he realizes! He
certainly behaved awfully to-night." She jumped up, her indignation
returning. "He did, indeed, and it won't do to encourage him in it. I
think he'll find me pretty cool--for a week or so!"

Whereupon her father suffered a renewal of his attack of uproarious
laughter.

Chapter XI

In the matter of coolness, George met Lucy upon her own predetermined
ground; in fact, he was there first, and, at their next encounter,
proved loftier and more formal than she did. Their estrangement lasted
three weeks, and then disappeared without any preliminary treaty: it had
worn itself out, and they forgot it.

At times, however, George found other disturbances to the friendship.
Lucy was "too much the village belle," he complained; and took a satiric
attitude toward his competitors, referring to them as her "local swains
and bumpkins," sulking for an afternoon when she reminded him that he,
too, was at least "local." She was a belle with older people as well;
Isabel and Fanny were continually taking her driving, bringing her home
with them to lunch or dinner, and making a hundred little engagements
with her, and the Major had taken a great fancy to her, insisting upon
her presence and her father's at the Amberson